I was happy to hear about how my new governor and the politically schizophrenic mayor of NYC lowered some taxes. Unfortunately, in the State of New York those happy moments don't last long. I saw this local story and was brought back to reality. Property taxes in NY are out of control. How can we be called "homeowners" when we don't really own our homes.
Take my own personal story. My husband remodels homes for a living, so we bought an older home that was well within our budget. We have spent a good deal of time and money transorming this little old house into a really nice place to live. By improving our home we are also improving our neighborhood.
Guess what happened after we improved our home? You guessed it! The town and county have punished us regularly. In six years our assessment has gone up about 40% (a real bargain compared to these people). At this rate, by the time my husband and I pay off our mortgage and retire, we'll have to pack up and move out of state.
How does our state government address the problem of rising property taxes? Well, of course they borrow millions of dollars to pay for pork, what else? They do it in a completey bi-partisan way, so it must be a great idea.
Note to Governor Paterson: You have a little more work to do.
4 comments:
Gotta love taxes. It is so nice when success is punished. Yeah, here in PA we were supposed to get breaks on property taxes with all that gambling money Gov. Rendell loves so much. In most cases the property tax relief is expected to be nowhere near the amount of property tax increases. Convenient how that works out.
I grew up in PA and we still have friends and family there. The libs are taking over your state, before you know it, your taxes will be as bad as they are here in NY.
And what about the Lottery? Wasn't that supposed to be the way we were going to fund the schools?
Yeah I know. I live in the central part of the state that used to be rather conservative when I first moved here 15 years ago. I have watched it shift though over the years. Well I just checked, because you got me curious. And according to www.palottery.com 31 cents of every dollar spent on lottery tickets (at least in PA) goes to help senior citizens. And then they added this for good measure:
'As an agency of state government, the Pennsylvania Lottery is a successful enterprise of which all Pennsylvanians can be proud.'
So we are gambling to help the elderly and save taxes. Oh yeah and the property taxes go to the schools, so I guess we are gambling to pay for schools too. Not to mention the fact that the state runs the liquor stores in PA. That's great - our state government makes a profit off of risky behavior. Hmm, sound like a good idea? And apparently a successful enterprise is good when the government runs it, but otherwise it is evil and should be punished.
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