Property Taxes

Last night I attended a public hearing with the local school district explaining why they need to raise my property tax by %40. No that is not a typo, it is being proposed that a %40 raise in my property tax is needed to balance the $33M deficit. This massive deficit was created when the Jordan School District was split to also create the Canyons District. The Canyons got the best of the tax base and therefor doesn't have near the problems.

The state legislature it appears passed a law that allows new districts to be created by cites that have a population of 100,000 or more or bordering cities that have 100,000 in population. So folks on the east side of the county voted to abandon the Jordan district and create their own.

None of the people on the west side of the valley were given the opportunity to vote or even voice their opinion. Now we are being told that we will pay for the split. I call this unfair, unjust and even taxation without representation. When this was first proposed the mayor of Herriman sued to block this happening. It is currently before the 10th Circuit Court awaiting a decision. I can't understand why this was allowed to go forward while we await this decision.

What I do know is that during the last two years my home has lost over $100,000 in value. Or in other words, almost all of the equity. In the last year alone the value dropped $83,600. My overall tax liability only dropped by $82. The amount of increase going to the school district is over $500. Doesn't seem right to me.

But back to the meeting. About 1,000 people showed up and over 200 registered to address the board, myself included. Before the public comments began an explanation of the current budget was given. Needless to say it did not sit well with the crowd. I call it a crowd..........an almost unruly mob may be a better description. People would hiss and boo and continually interrupt the board members as they spoke. I think this was counterproductive and most of the comments fell on deaf ears. That's too bad. Some folks had good points and presented them well, but the crowd didn't help us at all.

One point that was made was that it was partially our fault. That may be. After all not one of the board members has a background in business. They are all teachers. All of them. So during the next election what we need to do is find someone with a business degree and put them on the board to administer the budget and let the teachers worry about the curriculum and the like.

One person I saw at the meeting was State Representative Carl Wimmer. I caught up with him in an outer hallway as I was leaving. I put it to him that he should do something to help rectify this situation. I would think he would want to as this tax hike effects his family as well.

Hopefully the courts will settle this issue for us. My only worry about that is if this tax hike goes through, even if the court sees it our way, we wont get our money back. We all know that once the government gets it's hands on our money, we will never get it back.

One idea I have is to have a four day week with longer hours just like the state government. This could save some money. Also I saw on one of the explaining slides that a new school was going to be on a traditional year instead of year round. Does this save money? If it does then why the hell aren't all the schools going back to the traditional year? Only makes sense to me.

But what do I know?

After all, I'm only responsible for the bills.