27
Is There Relief From High Property Taxes
Posted by Lorraine Ross on May 27, 2008The answer is more likely no. As long as the cost of living continues to rise, property taxes will continue to rise as well. Even with the housing market right now, the economy is still on the rise. Schools still need money, communities need money and other districts need money as well. If no one would need money, like back in the cowboy and Indian days, then no one would have to pay taxes. Since this will never happen, property taxes are going to continue. Schools and school district are the major holder of the capital funds that are brought in by property taxes.
The only way to reduce property taxes and find some relief is to find better ways for schools to utilize smaller amounts of money. One example of poor spending happened in one local community, where the school board approved buying some type of removable flooring for a certain school without considering the time and labor needed to place it and remove between group activities. As a result, the expensive flooring is not used and was offered to another school in the community. This resulted in taxpayer’s money being spent foolishly and is now not available for other needs.
This is just one example of wasted tax dollars being spent. If there was a way to give relief from high property taxes, one would have been found by now. That fact that salaries are rising and more school districts are more about new technology than the old way of learning has called for an increase in higher taxes. One way to cut expenses would be to teach students the way baby boomers were taught, with textbooks and teachers. Libraries today could become obsolete if students continue to use computers for all their schoolwork.
Relief from high property taxes requires rethinking the way things are done today verses how things were done years ago. This goes for schools, fire and police, city governments and overall city beautification. There should be more volunteer work for beautification rather than spending thousands of dollars to replace flowers on the medians or buy new garbage cans for the downtown area because you found out the ones you bought are not user friendly. Putting in new streets and then deciding you need to have new sewers a year later is mismanagement of tax dollars. If someone would appoint a committee to oversee some of the horrible spending practices of local communities, relief from high property taxes would be a little closer to a reality.
No one wants to pay high property taxes, but when a referendum is up for vote for new artwork in a circle of a street and the majority thinks it is a great idea, everyone loses more tax dollars. Maybe the piece could have donated like the previous years artwork was. Of course, these are only some issues for higher property taxes, but without any say in the matter, many people are going to keep paying high property taxes.
It would be nice if people realized they could help reduce their own property taxes by being more involved in the school’s purchasing decisions…Many of us though don’t know how to get involved or don’t think we can. Where I live there is one school district that is notorious for being one of the WORST schools in the area, yet their taxes are almost double the others…It just doesn’t make much sense!
I have an even better one. The school district here was threatening to stop paying teachers because they were “out of money”. Meanwhile, they were building a new administration building for the school higher ups…complete with marble in the bathrooms.
Living in a town where the automotive industry has dried up ( 25,000 well paying jobs in the 70’s - 80’s) to less than 3000 of those same jobs now, property taxes are a killer. The problem is when they lower property taxes then they make up for the deficit in other ways. County option tax, wheel tax, increase of 1% on sales tax and the list goes on. The government may even be getting more of your money when they install these additional taxes!
great post. i loved on how you define and explain the high property taxes on this article.
how do you survive in this now adays. gas being so high. Its very hard. I think we should move to Europe.
This is a tough subject because we all hate property taxes, but we need the schools and want our children to succeed. Alot of property tax money goes to fund public schools, but we hear of so many situations where it is spent foolishly and could have done so much good. There needs to be something done about how that money is spent to ensure it goes to necessities.
The Texas legislature voted to reduce property taxes by 1/2 over two years. So what happened? The tax appraisal districts are jacking appraised values as much as they can get away with. The legislature thought it was doing home owners a favor, but didn’t have a plan to replace lost revenue. We just can’t get away from rising property taxes.
Our high property taxes reflect an assessed value we can’t even sell our home for. I think homes should be reassessed and taxed accordingly.
Here in Thailand property taxes are that low that it is as if they’d not exist, but the public schools are also that poor that you are forced to spend a fortune for private schools for your kids to give them a decent education.
Lorraine, your explanation made the connection obvious to me for the first time, thanks. With the next semester coming in a week,and with that the next school payment, I wonder now what system is better …
Add A Comment