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We had a meeting tonight to discuss the pros/cons of going for a bond election to fix our aging, 50-year-old schools. Here in Colorado, bonds are paid through property tax mill levies. Residential property is assessed at a much lower rate (around 7.5%) while businesses are assessed at 29%. So we had a room full of disgruntled businessmen, saying this just "wasn't the time" to consider raising taxes (like any time ever is). We went through all the calculations on how much additional tax property owners would pay. For a typical home in this area, the tax increase is about $7/month. For a business, for each $1 million in property value, the tax is about $150/month. They were very upset at this.
The thing they seemed most upset about was the fact that, while they didn't live in the district and couldn't vote there, all the voters are low-income renters and DO get to vote (we're a very low-income district).
It's going to be an interesting election year.
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