taxes

Bloggers Dave Hellings story in The Kansas City Star hit me hard on Monday, September 28th, 2009. I did not know this too will be a "Special Election." I have a serious dislike to any type of wasting of taxpayers money. Why must we waste any money at this especially difficult time for so many families in Jackson County? We just got through with an election of a single issue tax in August. Now we have yet another single issue county wide election with maybe an add on or two in smaller districts.

 I have seen that the school district is fighting for more money. I just recently looked at all the Tif projects on the maps. Almost all the Tif developments are in either Blue Springs or Ray Town school district. It appears to me that we have given away the future of our schools. I personally believe The Tifs create an unfair playing field with the existing businesses in Independence. We were told how great they would be and how much money they would generate. Then why are we getting all these tax proposals to vote on.

In these poor economic times is our city doing enough to protect our future. I just read where Rhode Island is shutting down the government for 12 days to save money. Recently all I hear is the local governments need more money. It appears most of the spending models of our local governments depends on a strong economy. I am concerned that they have turned a blind eye to conservative money management.

 The school district is wanting more money. They went so far as to go to court to demand more money. This scares me when public officials want to go around the public to fund their own pockets. We have an extremely scary economy right now. Personally I do not think this is the time to be spending money. The issue is not whether we need a new high school or not. The paramount issue is to be a very wise steward of our money. When the economy recovers is the time to discuss capital improvements. The Bond issue could be used to make our school district leaner and meaner.

I'm new to blogging, so please be gentle with me! My name is also my website, so if you've ever been curious about what a TEA party is, or want to learn when and where the next TEA parties will be, then check out www.TeaPartyKC.com  I started the website to try to organize and consolidate the available information about tea parties, because I was having such a hard time personally in finding the information. TEA parties are very much a grassroots thing, so there is somewhat of a lack of organization... I hope to change that!

 Monday I was in training to work at the polls. This is what we learned. We are expecting a very low voter turn out. We will only have 54 Polling places to vote instead of the 100 Polling places we normaly have. When I raised my hand and asked why will we have such a low turn out our instructor informed us because it's a one ballet issue and because that none of the papers are reporting on it. I hope there is not to much confusion finding where to vote.

Can anyone explain how a TIF project affects the tax base?
Are there special Property Tax abatements?
How does this affect our schools?
Is a TIF project detrimental to surrounding businesses?
Can a TIF project suck money from public services?
What are the pluses and minuses?