Lynchburg City Council had a meeting tonight re: the general budget as well as lowering the property tax assessment from 1.05 to 0.99 per $100 of assessed value. Normally they wouldn't think about lowering taxes, but the state assessing program raised property values by 5%. (assessments are done locally, but using the state program - or so we were tld by an assessor. Interestingly, property values in the Norfolk area dropped 30% from the previous assessment. Now, I'm not a genius, but I can tell you that property values here are CERTAINLY not 5% higher than they were 2 years ago. In fact, they aren't even EQUAL with what they were 2 years ago. The following is what I brought to the council:
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Councilmen, Mayor Foster, I am here tonight to protest the 5% raise in property values determined by the latest assessment by the state. This is merely an economic shell game. You cannot look us in the eyes and tell us that our homes are worth more now, than they were 2 years ago. You cannot look us in the eyes and tell us that YOUR homes are worth more now, than they were two years ago.
You cannot tax us more at a time that we make less. I understand that you took a symbolic vote to lower your pay for the next few months back to the level that it was before you voted yourselves a pay raise. I further understand that some of you wanted to give that money to charity. I find that to be a noble gesture.
I must congratulate Mr. Dodson on voting against the raise when it was originally proposed. I further agree with Mr. Helgeson when he says that there are better ways to save money. A great place to start is the city school budget, which for a school that teaches arithmetic, apparently can’t even properly count how many students it has.
Mayor Foster, you are right when you say that you think everyone in city government has to sacrifice. However, merely sacrificing the same percentage of pay as the city workers is but a token sacrifice. What is $100 or $120 dollars per person in the grand scheme of things? No, no. I believe that for those in leadership the requirement is more than for those not in leadership. If you truly mean to make a personal sacrifice it is my belief that you should sacrifice your ENTIRE salary for the year.
If the boards of troubled companies are being forced to return most if not all of their salaries - even salaries that they were contractually obligated to receive – should not YOU also as essentially the board of an economically troubled city return YOUR salaries for the good of the city?
While Councilman Johnson may indeed be correct when he says that the council couldn’t begin to be paid dollar for dollar for what they do, I would offer to you the case of a friend of mine who is a Commander in the Navy. Who as essentially the CEO of a squadron of Helicopters with 250 “employees” and “Millions upon Millions” in assets is paid FAR less than what he is worth. Yet he does it without complaint and makes sacrifices for the good of his squadron far in excess of what is required of him. Is it too much to ask you to do the same? I would offer the suggestion that should the Council REALLY have the best interests of the citizens at hand, they would vote to not be paid at ALL until these troubled economic times are behind us. You are after all public SERVANTS.
The way best way for all businesses to deal with difficult economic times is to cut costs. It is NOT to increase their prices at a time when their customers can least afford to pay them. In cutting costs, that not only begins in the boardroom, but also carries through to every department.
As tax payers we are taxed when we earn money, taxed when we spend it, taxed on top of that if we eat in the city, taxed if we keep what we bought, taxed if we sell it, taxed if we give it away and then taxed when we die with it. Ironically, criminals can only be made to pay once for their crimes, but tax payers can be made to pay every second of every day for the crime of being productive and earning money to follow their American Dream.
The question I place before you tonight is, how can we begin to trust you with our tax money when the city can’t even get its’ school budget right? The bottom line is that the increased assessment by the state comes at a time when we all can ill afford to pay it. You have the power at this very moment to lower the tax rate and effectively keep our taxes at their current dollar amount.
While I don’t expect you to actually give back your salaries – you Do work hard for them – I DO expect you to do the right thing by the people of Lynchburg and relieve them of this covert tax increase placed upon them by the state. To borrow the words of Daniel Hannan, the danger you have before you should you NOT lower property taxes is that of becoming the devalued city council of a devalued city in the devalued economy of a devalued - and soon to be bankrupt - country.
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I'm quite sure Mayor Foster is not a fan of me at this point, but the bottom line is that government MUST look out for the people it serves. Interestingly, i got some applause from the people at the meeting...lol (Not bad I guess considering applause isn't allowed in council meetings...)
At any rate, the opposition to the increased property assessments was high, with only (apparently) a tweaker - i really wish they'd do drug and alcohol tests before they let people speak - and this crazy old guy who happened to be a raving liberal, in favor of the higher assessments. Everyone else was pretty much up in arms, and rightly so, about the tax increase.
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