I read today that the Romneys have been able to benefit from a reassessment of a home, so they can pay less property taxes. I don't know where the Romneys live. The last I knew, Mitt was Governor of Massachusetts, and they lived in Belmont. But evidently, they paid cash in 2008 for a house in La Jolla, California. That's a mega-upscale suburb of San Diego. They paid $12 million. Cash. The property tax for a house of that cost is... a lot. But they claimed the property values had gone down, and they wanted to pay less. After some extended dickering with the assessor's office, they got themselves a reduction of $109K. Which presumably means they're still paying a good deal more than that. But hey, anyone who can pay $12M cash for a house, which might be a second house, or a third, or who knows what, can afford the taxes. That's not how the Romneys looked at it. If they could keep the money, they wanted to. It's better in their bank account, maybe the offshore one, than in the coffers of La Jolla, California, the tony town where they wanted to own a house. It's like their federal tax returns, of which they are apparently not ashamed. They are trying as hard as they can not to support the country of which Mitt wants to be President. But not to misrepresent the Romneys, they have done absolutely nothing illegal. Shamefully unpatriotic, maybe. But not illegal.
Some time ago, I did an evaluation for an attorney. The "patient" was a man who had suffered a work injury, and he got a very large settlement. But since he couldn't work any more, he also got Social Security Disability. He also had considerable savings from his very successful career. And he would have been eligible for Medicaid, except that settlement meant that he had plenty of money and didn't need Medicaid. The proposed legal intervention was for him to set up a trust, so the settlement money would be "shielded," and it would not show as an asset for him, and then he could get Medicaid. I had to determine if he understood what he was doing. He sure did. In talking to the attorney later, I noted the little ethical quirk. The attorney laughed, and asked me if I thought this was... "un-American." Actually, yes, I told him. I did.
So here we are, occupying our municipality, which has a unique charm. That's why we like it here. It also has unique limitations, which are the other side of the charm coin. We're quiet, we're low key, we're comparatively modest, as these unique communities go, we don't have any commerce, and we don't have much money. Almost all the money we get, we get from ourselves, through property taxes and utility fees. If we want anything we don't have, we have to provide it for ourselves. Whether it's nice green spaces, a crack and esteemed police department, public art, or anything at all, it's on us, the 3000 of us who live here, to pony up to get it.
It wasn't really that hard to do when property values were inflated. Ad valorem taxes were inflated, too. But property values crashed after '07, and so did our revenues. Many of us now pay less in taxes, except those homesteaded old-timers whose taxes were so ridiculously, irrationally, and statutorily low that assessed values could halve, and those homeowners would still have a 3% increase.
What can we do? We can raise our tax rate, as the Commission appears poised to do. That will help some, and good for them for doing it. We can voluntarily pay extra tax. What, you say? Not likely? I agree. We can donate something to the Foundation, which will use what it gets to do extra projects. The standard buy-in is $20 per household per year. Don't laugh. I know it's next to nothing. Do you want to know how many people I encounter who say they don't have $20, or need to discuss it with their significant other first? Let me just say, we don't have nearly enough twenties. Feel free to cough one up. But in reality, no one is limited to $20. If the Foundation is doing a project that particularly appeals to you, or you want to use Foundation imprimatur to support your own project, please, by all means... Just let us know.
The point is, we, the Village, need help. We need it from you, and there's no place else from where we're going to get it than from you. So please help. I know it sounds foolish, but write the Village an unnecessary check. Take out an ad, or just send a message of some sort, in the newsletter. Donate to your Foundation.
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