Posted on 06/21/2005 3:22:01 PM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative
Today, Governor Perry proposed a solution to the recent tax trials of the Texas legislature; a plan which will deliver the largest property tax cut in history to the hardworking people of Texas.
Perry’s plan, if adopted, will result in a net Tax Cut of $300 million for the people of Texas, while providing a solution to the school finance reform dilemma.The measure will serve taxpayers, while providing historic funding increase for schools.
In order to facilitate the tax cut, Perry has proposed a close in franchise tax loopholes, leading to a more widely shouldered business tax. In addition, his plan would increase the sales tax rate by 7/10 of a percent – to 6.95%, and increase the cigarette tax by $1.
Perry’s plan, which may prove to represent a significant compromise between earlier House and Senate proposals:
With the Texas Supreme Court decision on several key school finance cases on the horizon, the manner in which the Texas legislature addresses the current problems in the system could control the fate of millions of Texas school children.Perry’s plan, which comes on the heels of a three-week legislative break, may provide a good starting point for successful negotiations between House and Senate leaders.
1. The State of Texas sets the elections date.
2. Most polling locations are in schools and churchs for federal and state elections anyway. When you move them you confuse the voters. They are keeping the same polling locations which work in every election.
3. The Texas Ethics Commission ruled that school districts cannot do that so if they are doing it report that to the TEC.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/states/texas/northeast/9942700.htm
4. Or in other words. The voters defeated a bond proposal and then the voters approved a subsequent bond election. Well to democracy.
"If your neighbor invests a bunch of money in his house and then sells it, everybody in the area gets re-appraised."
True. Or some idiot who has just sold his home in California doesn't bother to look at the Texas market before buying and pays an inflated asking price for the house down your street. Then all his new neighbors get re-valued based on his stupidity.
We will never fix the problem in Texas until we have a state income tax.
This is nothing but fraud. Lower the property taxes and they will just revalue the property value upwards so it's a wash. Meanwhile our sales taxes go up and up and more things are subject to a tax. And also, the wealthy "ranchers" run a couple of head of cattle on their "ranch" and get a tax break while the 93 year old widow is thrown out of her 800 square foot home because she can't pay the real estate taxes. This is an outrage and why I WILL vote for Kinky Friedman next election. We need a state income tax and we need it now. Any damn fool with a brain knows it as does every politician who is afraid to stand on his own two hind legs and admit it. Friedman was right when he declared we have the highest capitol building in the United States (taller than the U.S. capitol building) and it is populated by all midgets. Right on the money.
Broaden the tax base by eliminating the damn senior tax freeze. Senior lobbyists from the Texas Silver Haired Legislature have been riding around the state for the past 18 months getting town after town to exempt seniors (over 65) from any increase in CITY property taxes for services they use every day. (The seniors are already exempt from SCHOOL property taxes.)
They have spawned a permanent intergenerational socialism that will increasingly narrow the tax base as the wave of boomers reach 65 in the coming decade. The senior leadership is mighty proud of this and notched their belt (web site) regularly at: http://www.netarrantseniors.net/Freeze%20Status%20in%20Tarrant%20County%20&%20Elsewhere.htm
Seniors are using clout to push for tax breaks
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/11899055.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Wed, Jun. 15, 2005 in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Cities divided by tax freeze
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/states/texas/northeast/9531151.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
August 29, 2004 in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Sending the wrong message in Arlington
Fort Worth Star-Telegram Letter to Editor Jan 31, 2005
Arlington voters will decide Saturday whether one group of people -- seniors -- should have further increases in their city property taxes paid for by everybody else.
It's been said that our form of government is in danger when one group realizes that it can vote itself money from the public treasury at the expense of others. The senior tax freeze is a classic case of this.
It's also a sad commentary on seniors when they vote for local government to extract higher taxes from their children and grandchildren to pay their way. How can they face their own flesh and blood who are struggling to raise families and pay education costs?
With the $60,000 tax exemption that seniors receive in Arlington, those who live in small to midsize houses pay little in city taxes.
In fact, 22 percent of those currently receiving the over-65 exemption pay no city property taxes, and 17 percent pay less than $100 per year.
The net result is that a senior tax freeze amounts to a significant tax break for the wealthier homeowners.
Passing a tax freeze for seniors would have the unintended consequence of allowing seniors to vote for city improvements (police and fire protection, ambulance service, libraries, senior centers, roads, water and sewer) without facing any extra taxes.
This allows a steadily growing portion of the population to vote to raise taxes on everybody else while they enjoy the benefits.
I urge Arlington voters to think about the consequences of a senior tax freeze and the message that it will send to your children and grandchildren
In round numbers (too lazy to look up the actual appraisal) my last bill ran about $2,400 for each $100k of valuation and with the explosion, on paper, of property values the valuation is way off the charts, no way it represents the market value.
Prayer request from a Texas Freeper who wishes to remain anonymous:
... a personal thanks for this ping. I am a public school teacher. My philosophy is, as long as they are there, I aught to save as many as I can. All I want is textbooks for my kids (they have none, otherwise) and all that the upper-ups in Austin have in their ears is pigs (NEA) asking for a payraise. This is a prayer request for your pinglist. Make it anonymous?
Yes, indeed... just like school board elections that are designed to ensure eternal incumbency.
Yeah, right.
When I was in high school we had a dozen or so temporary classrooms, the "shacks" as we called them. I liked my classes in those because it got me outside between classes, instead of just shuffling down the hallway. And, they seemed less like school, not so institutional.
Just because it was a legal election doesn't mean we have to like the outcome, especially when the school district uses it power to manipulate the election, like this one, on a Saturday, Memorial Day weekend.
The Board of Trustees hereby finds that the election will be the only election for the issuance of bonds held by the District on a date other than a uniform election date during the current state fiscal biennium and that holding the election on a date other than a uniform election date is in the public interest.
1. The State of Texas sets the elections date.
No.
The Texas Election Code specifies four uniform election dates: the third Saturday in January, the first Saturday in May, the second Saturday in August and the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Elections held on another date are not valid, except for general and presidential primary elections, which are held on the second Tuesday in March in even-numbered years. There are, however, exemptions from these uniform election dates. Runoff elections, local option elections under the Alcoholic Beverage Code, bond or tax levy elections for school or college districts, emergency elections, elections to fill vacancies in the Legislature, recall elections, and other elections that are specifically exempted by statute can be held on non-uniform dates.
Sounds like you've got some high-priced commercial property you'd like some practical relief on. And you want the homeowners to relieve you.
The district has stadium/field-house/baseball complexes that serve several schools: the two large football fields on this property host five or six football games a week during the season, and the small field (small grandstand, tiny pressbox) is used for four or five additional middle-school or elementary-school games every week. In spring the football fields are restriped as soccer pitches, and large crowds attend (lots of blue-and-white flags).
HISD is a big taxer and a big spender, and its teachers' commitment to educating the kids is second to......well, several.
HISD just had another round of cheating scandals involving three or four schools, regarding the basic competence tests the State requires every year. A couple of school principals demoted, a couple of teachers fired.
Unless they somehow slip into another dimension to go to sleep at night, everyone in the state occupies real estate one way or another. Whether renters, homeowners, condo dwellers, or hotel occupants, we all pay the property tax somehow, usually through rent if not directly.
I had a number of classes while in college that were held in "temporary" classroom buildings that had somehow become semipermanent -- one set was about 30 years old, another was about 20 years old. Not a thing wrong with them as a learning environment. I did fine. So what if they didn't have fine Romanesque porticoes like Rice University?
How about spending cuts on other areas of Taxes (that is the way the state name is now spelled) state budget to pay for it. Our taxes are to dang high.
Not at all, and as I said, I preferred them.
They also offer the flexibility to expand and contract the size of a school as needed.
Rick Perry says the state spends well over $10,000 per student per year. I'm convinced that $9,750 of it is feeding the bureaucracy beast.
That's exactly what happened on my street. New guy offered a contract when the house had been on the market for three days, paid the asking price set by a realtor notorious for setting high asking prices and whammo! The county tax people had left me alone last year after I had fought them on market value the year before -- but this time, they jacked up the "market value" by 20.5% and gave me the maximum statutory 10% bump in "appraised value". The values are supposed to reflect January 1st conditions, but I think that that sale had to have had an effect on their decision to reappraise.
Yes, and my Louisiana land-grant college probably deeply appreciated the fact that they could get them bon marche', too -- they got some of those buildings, or so I heard, from some World War II military installations in the area and had them hauled in and reassembled quickly and cheaply. I'd say the taxpayers really got their money's worth!
Nah, I've got inside poop from a retired teacher that The Beast doesn't take more than about $6500 of that. Unless you start counting the doughnuts.
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