Colorado Springs has decided to live without services rather than raise taxes. I’d suspect this was grandstanding designed to raise public support, but CS is one of the most conservative cities in the US.
For those of you who’d always wanted to live in a tax free paradise, here’s some examples of the “trade-offs” involved:
– More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday.
– The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet.
– The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops – dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
– The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
– Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
– Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
– City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open.
– Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends.
– The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.
Back in 1992 my town closed its public library for six months rather than raise taxes. We’ve also gone through our periods of overcrowded classrooms, two police cruisers for the whole town, and only one fire station open. Channel 5 did an investigation the other night into such consequences, which could be downright dangerous or even deadly. The news also laid the blame squarely at the feet of the voters. My town is on the NH line, which people do see as a tax-free paradise due to lack of sales or income tax. What they don’t seem to realize because they don’t actually live there is the whopping NH property tax.
We criticize politicians but people have to remember “they” voted for them. he same is true with taxes… if a town or city does not want to pay more taxes then the responsible from government is to reduce services. If the reduced services are unacceptable, the people can react by complaining…. and then they can raise taxes. If not, then they get what they want. We have a state just north of us which has no state sales tax and no state income tax. They rely on local towns to raise the taxes they need to support their town. If people don’t like it they can raise taxes or move to another town. It’s a system which puts the power in the hands of the people where it belongs instead of the bureaucrats who will misspend it.
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p>As for NH property taxes, we in MA pay state sales tax and income tax AND our property taxes are high as well. If you add up the taxes we pay (#23) it’s a lot more than NH(#46) pays
People tend to vote their own pocketbooks and fail to see the big picture. This isn’t just about wants; it’s about needs. There are certain things we need, like emergency services, whether people think they want them or not. Sure if someone who voted against taxes complains about lack of services then we can turn that person and say well, you voted to defund it. However, since it’s all or nothing people like me who either want the service or realize the need don’t get the services either even if we DID vote for it and lost.
Some towns have fully operational fire departments while others have a volunteer force with Harry, Fred and Charlie coming to your house on the single engine to put a fire out. My town is constantly fighting the fire department trying to get a full time force when we barely ever have fires.
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p>Who decides if there is a genuine need… the fire department? They have a bias, jobs, more equipment an they like playing fire fighter (my brother is one and been playing one since we are 4 and 6 years old).
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p>You’re a history nut, go look at the first settlers and the break from England and understand the feelings they had about making their own decisions and living with the consequences. About 1 man, 1 vote.
The thing people seem to forget about our break with Britain is that we had NO say in taxes coming out of Westminster. My position has been that taxes should be raised by bodies elected by the people, not either extreme of the people directly or any unelected body. The thing about something like a fire department is that frequency of use isn’t that great a measure of need. Most people wouldn’t complain if there were never any fires, but if and when one does occur then the service needs to be there. The channel 5 story I refered to above was about a fire in Shirley that was not addressed in time to prevent serious injury. The reason for this is that it occured on a weekend and budget cuts forced the closure of the closest fire station on weekends (as if fires limit themselves to only starting and spreading Monday through Friday!), so the station across town had to respond wasting precious minutes. Your town and any town SHOULD have a full time force even if that force is relatively small, because you never know when it might be needed.
First, I gave you the “bow” as a history nut so no I don’t want to take you on.
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p>I’ve had this argument before with service providers. The fire station was closed and they didn’t get there in time. What if it was open, and they STILL didn’t get there in time? Should they have 2 stations? And what if with 2 stations they STILL didn’t get their in time…
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p>We have to weigh risks/rewards or cost/benefits… all the time. It is done with hospitals and other public service providers, it is done with locating Burger Kings, it is done with letting someone out on parole… there are points on the curve where there is “sufficient” services and then everything above and below.
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p>I think the “people” have the right to chose their point on the cost/benefit curve which they believe is sufficient. I am going to my Town Meeting tomorrow and we will see in “living color” how the process should work. We will get what we deserve tomorrow (new school or no new school).
…there is a standard recommended response time for 911 calls. There should be enough open stations in the right locations to be able to reach all corners of the town within that amount of time, assuming its not extra busy and there’s a crew and truck ready to go from the station.
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p>I still don’t like the get what they deserve argument. That would be OK if the people who voted yes got the services and the ones who voted no didn’t, but if I vote yes for these services I don’t appreciate being penalized by the shortsightedness of my neighbors.
Wouldn’t you rather have one fire station (which may be too far) then no station at all?
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p>Of course the next step in this distopia is for rich neighborhoods to band together to hire private security and fire agencies.
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p>The poor? They can fend for themselves.
The people have spoken. The 13% complained that they couldn’t afford more taxes and that the existing schools were fine but we won anyway.
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p>I wish you were there Christopher to tell these people on fixed income or working poor or maybe laid of working families.
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p>These people who voted no were obviously “shortsighted” and the elderly ones who had no kids were like the ones who you said “didn’t get the services” so why vote for a new school.
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p>Luckily, my side won.
It sounds like you voted FOR the new school, in which case there’s hope for you yet:) Property taxes do present a conundrum because of the fixed income issue, but often circuit breakers can be used to ameliorate that. We need to all act as a community and not have the I got mine attitude. There are people whose children are grown who won’t use the schools and younger families that won’t use the Council on Aging. We all hope we don’t need the fire department, but all these things should be collectively paid for.
but I am the “education Czar” for a non-profit in town so I was working the last 3 weeks handing out flyers at Stop & Shop and Dunkin Donuts. I helped critique the presentation by the building Committee for 2 hours on Thursday night tuning it for today’s vote. Went very well!
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p>We do have a mechanism to handle “hardship” cases for town residents needing help with property taxes (we all pay a little extra to cover these people).
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p>We’re in agreement about the “community” responsibility. We may just be in conflict about “what level” of commitment is satisfactory for public safety… which is ok with me.
… place to set up a B&E crew. Surely all that money people are saving will show result in an increase of stealable goods.
One might argue that some extreme anti-tax zealots welcome the reduced municipal services in Colorado Springs as an improvement. Conceivably, a majority of the residents of that no-longer-fair city might count themselves among zealots.
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p>What seems clear to me, though, is that the majority of Americans don’t. I bet most Americans will find what will happen to Colorado Springs horrifying and it can serve as an object lesson for years to come.