The City made a big deal out of not raising the tax rate this year, despite losing revenue due to the pandemic. Presumably, people won’t be spending as much money when they stay home, and that will affect the City’s sales tax revenue, among other things.
Your tax bill might still go up, because the Central Appraisal District reckons that property values rose, on average, four percent this year. You could have fought your property valuation, but that window of opportunity slammed shut on May 15, or 30 days after your evaluation.
Even if your property valuation didn’t go up, your still paying more in taxes. Or rather, you’re getting less. The libraries and swimming pools are closed. The citizens collection stations, your neighborhood trash dumps, are closed, or only open one day a week. Starting December 6, Sun Metro won’t operate on Sundays.
Economists call that shrinkflation. Like making your chocolate bars smaller, but charging the same. (I got an M&Ms Fun Pack, like you hand out on Halloween, the other day, and it only had three M&Ms in it.)
That’s what the City has done. We’re paying the same, or a little more, but we’re getting less.
Which, in a way, is an improvement. We’ve been paying more and getting less for the last few years.
Grim news. The city raised taxes to the maximum before the state legislature capped what the cities could do on their own. And that way Margo could falsely claim that he kept his promises about keeping taxes low. Please, people, don´t just sigh or gripe, VOTE in the runoff election Nov 25-Dec 12. We have a chance to vote for Leeser for mayor who will be more accountable (and we need to hold his feet to the fire with strong civil society activism!). Also, re-elect Alex Annello for district 2 who is the only member of council who raises good questions and challenges.
But, Leeser did not keep the promises he made last go ’round, either! So, basically, our choice is simply to vote for which one will fail in his duties. We need a strong Mayor form of government, for one thing, and we need to dump the current system.
Add to the list of cut services the sudden suspension of recycling in the entire city. Due to a shortage of drivers? With no explanation for why they don’t make an effort to replace the (evidently) lost drivers? Garbage pickup once a week, and now you gotta cram what used to be your recyclables AND your garbage into just the gray bin? Really? I’d say poor management, but that is putting it mildly. We are getting so screwed by our elected reps. Meanwhile, how is it possible that the housing market is booming? Who the hell wants to move here? Where are the buyers coming from?
Maybe the city could hire “normal Caucasions” as replacement drivers? Less COVID prone. Then we’d have normal collections again.
“Normal Caucasions” only get the upper management jobs. Look how that has worked out for us.
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