Relief from High Property Taxes
If you would like a crystal ball to tell you that there might be some kind of relief when it comes to property taxes in the years to come it will all probably be just wishful thinking. Property taxes lets face it rise with the cost of living and we havent seen that come down ever have we? Everyone needs money - and not just money but more and more as the days go by. The schools need more to run well so does the community and the district as well. As long as they do we have to pay our taxes and the taxes keep pace with their rising needs. In the ideal world there would be no taxes of any kind to be paid but till we get there property taxes are very much a reality.
Where do our property taxes go? Well the main beneficiaries are schools and school funds and possibly the only way that we can bring property taxes down is to make better use of the money that go to schools. There is a lot of unnecessary and unthinking waste that goes on. If only resources were better planned and the financials were better looked into there could be a lot of money saved. For example a school could approve of flooring or roofing that was very expensive to lay or fit when just a little practical planning could have reduced the expenditure a lot.
The thing is that all this waste is being financed by those of us who pay our property tax. True school teachers salaries are going up and there is always money needed to upgrade technology but even so if the money angle were more planned with a keen eye kept on the bottom line there would be a large amount that could be saved. Maybe we need to go back in some ways to the old teacher with a textbook classroom which worked quite well in the 60s and 70s.
What is the need of the hour is a rethink and this does not mean just school spending but everything. If the police and fire departments the city upkeep and all the rest of the spending were to be looked at and overhauled we would probably need less. There could be volunteers who could come forward for a whole lot of services that are being paid good dollars for. Be it beautification of our roads looking after the greenery on them the garbage cans keeping the city clean whatever. There has to also be a committee to make sure that there is planned spending - not build a park one day and change it into a parking lot the next year. This is waste of money at its colossal worst.
What we need is accountability for the spending of our dollars. Once that happens it could just see a drastic drop in the property taxes we pay. Lets take a vote on that new statue that costs so much or that painting for the town hall - do we really need to pay more so it can be up there? Let people donate dont lets pay so we end up paying more!