Here we go again. The Mass Legislature wants to make it legal to raise property taxes on young folks only. The bill passed in the House and is now in the Senate as bill H 4534. So much for Deval helping us on property tax as he promised during his "feel good - elect me" election. . . .
What the bill says is this – you can raise taxes but those over 65 will not get the increase in their property tax. So only young working folks will have higher property taxes and it has to be enough to not only cover the increase in town spending that is their fair share, but they have to cover the over 65 folks in town too.
Why do this? Simple, the older folks will go vote down overrides. The scum, politicians think that if they can either keep them from voting or get them to say yes then the overrides will pass and they will be able to do what they want with property tax, good bye Prop 2 ½. This is a blatant attack on our attempt to curb their spending that has been in place for over 20 years now. They clamed the world would end if it passed back then and nothing happened. Now they claim it will end without the overrides.
Write your Senator and tell them to vote NO on this. Young folks can’t afford to live here now, this will just make it worse. I am starting to think we are trying to run all the young folks and families out of this state. We need to say no, and we need to learn how to live without a government hand out. These towns need to live in their means like us voters have to and start to cut programs that we really don’t need. All I want my town to do is fund schools, cops, firemen, and keep the roads fixed up. All the rest should be extras and only allowed if we can afford it. If the money is not there, cut the program or find another way to fund it. Budgets need to be trimmed and if that means sports goes or drama club or glee club that is too bad. We need to have priority here. And don’t even get me started on the money we dump into special ed programs for kids that don’t belong mainstreamed but we do it so the parents can feel good. Special ed does help some, but we spend way too much on some students that it is unfair on the rest who have to do with less for this feel good program. It is one thing to work with some kids that need extra help in Math and English or have some ADHD. . . Special ed programs need to be objectively evaluated to see what the cost/benefit to the community is. It would not be easy but then we will all see the real cost spend on these programs and how the cost for one or two kids with major problems can affect the rest of the students in the school. What ever happened to the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the one. . . .
1 comment:
Georgia has a law like that that encourages retirees to come live there. What the Georgia law does is that it holds your property tax at the level at which you buy the house so if you stay there a long time, it is a good deal. If you make major renovations as in add a room, your taxes will adjust to market rate. If you move, you will pay market rate on your new house. So this only protects old people who are planning to stay put. Where you have a bunch of old people, you have a lot of jobs that cater to the old people. When all your old people leave, the service jobs that go with them leave.
This allows retirees to budget better and encourages them to live in Georgia.
This doesn't mean that retirees don't pay their fair share of taxes. To get the tax break, you
a) can't move
b) must live in the house as your primary residence
c) can't make major improvements such as expanding the structure
If you can do all three of those things and are an old person living on a budget, the state helps you by not hiking up your property tax by unknown amounts a year.
MD has a rule that hurts anyone buying a new house. Basically, people who live in a place have their property tax increases capped at about 5% a year. People who are just buying a house are the only ones who have to pay market rate. We really got burned when we bought this house because we considered the property tax of the old owners. It turned out to be HALF the tax of our new rate that was not capped at 5% a year.
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