Irritated

I'm feeling a bit irritated, so I thought I'd just post an open letter to my town that I will never get around to sending, though I wish I would send it and that someone would actually read it and pay attention to what I have to say.

Dear Town,

I opened my tax bill from you the other day and I thought you should be informed that there has been a mistake. It seems that my taxes have gone up dramatically despite the ridiculously low value you have assigned to my home. You may not understand economics, but typically when the value of something goes down, the taxes on it also decrease. Surely this was just an oversight on your part.

By the way, what exactly are these increased taxes paying for? I went to the town hall meeting and the only expenses I remember being discussed were the improvements to the water system, a few new vehicles, some bulletproof vests for our police force (not sure why we need that one since we live in the country and not too much happens here), and a ridiculously expensive $1.5M artificial turf for the high school that we were promised would not increase our taxes.

Sure, water improvements are expensive, but my water and sewer rates also increased. I saw a flat charge for water system improvements and my sewer rate went up about $2.50 per thousand gallons to pay for sewer system improvements. So neither of those things came from my property taxes. I also don't think that a few new vehicles warrants the hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra revenues being generated by these increased taxes and I'm fairly certain bullet proof vests don't cost that much either. If they do, you're getting screwed. Maybe you should shop around?

In any event, we're in a recession. Instead of trying to outspend the federal or state governments, why not try a new approach and cut spending? Stop creating rules, regulations, red tape, departments and inspectors that simply sit around collecting money. Instead, do your jobs, cut the BS and tighten your belts. You can't spend your way out of debt and you can only tax the people so much before they simply run out of money too. Soon, this town will die out the way others around us already have and you will not nobody to blame, but yourselves.

Sincerely,
One of the last remaining taxpayers.