Scott Goldstein at the Dallas News Crime Blog mentions that "Some Dallas police union leaders are calling for a property tax hike to help shore up a $130 million budget gap. They hope such a move would ease the cuts for their department." Goldstein reports that an officer at a closed door union meeting Tuesday on the topic bore a tshirt declaring: "Raise taxes, no cuts."
The problem: Tough on crime has become too tough on taxpayers, and police waste too much time enforcing petty rules instead of focusing on clearance rates for serious crimes. There are ways to expand police coverage without raising taxes if city leaders have the political courage to pursue them.
Yeah... I don't think I want to give the cops any more of my money so that they can more effectively hassle me about every little pissant revenue generating minor infraction on the ever-increasing books. I think I'd rather see them take some serious cuts, and drive a little easier every day.
ReplyDeleteWhen are people going to learn that if you have a group of people who are not performing up to par the solution is not to throw more money at the problem? If property tax rates go up much more I know a lot of people who would not be able to afford it or who would suffer an increased economic burden just to hold onto their house. And how is it possible to raise property taxes when home values are down? Makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteHome values down 1:01p? I just received my appraisal from our tax appraisal district. My property valuation increased $10,200.
ReplyDeleteI'm not alone here either. When the lege said they did something about school property taxes, that was a joke. What happened here is appraisals went up.
Course most of you don't figure what your monthly property tax payment amounts to when you compare it to basic monthly rates for telephone, natural gas, electricity, and cable television just to mention a few.
In return, I get good streets and roads, street lighting, municipal parks, police, fire and ems protection, municipal water and garbage services.
I agree with all of your points regarding expanding police services w/o raising taxes.
I've never lived in a state where there were so many different law enforcement agencies operating in the same jurisdictions. We have the county sheriffs, city cops, ISD cops, city marshalls, constables, DPS troopers, and the myriad of other state cops and agents around. How about consolidating some of these agencies? It seems to me that Dallas County could combine all of its police agencies into a single agency to operate the jail and law enforcement. But, then again, that would require a constitutional change, and God forbidden Texas should do something logical like that.
ReplyDeleteThe Budget shortfall will only get worse over time. When local and state agencies started mad hiring to grab up the homeland defense money that was available, it was written on the wall this would eventually happen. Hiring a bunch of new brown shirts to shore up the blue line for the old brown shirts did nothing but guarantee a financial meltdown a few years later. So, here we are in the melt down, and the 'fix' is to charge property owners a higher premium to have their civil rights eroded.. Greatness....
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