It arrived last week. They said it would. A Halloween surprise.
For over a number of days I heard it was coming, from social media, people in the know and from this newspaper. There it was in my mail box. The notice from Carbon County for next year’s property taxes.
Each year we all dread seeing it but know it is inevitable. Most years it is like reading a note from Edgar Allan Poe. This year it was a Steven King piece of work; even though I knew it would be scary- I didn’t know how much.
The notice proclaimed that the county wanted to raise taxes in two different areas. The first was on my property tax at a cost of $19.79 over last year’s charge on the assessing and collecting line. I looked at that and thought, “Well I can handle that.”
As Seth Ovesen, the county clerk said in the last county commission meeting, they needed that increase because they lost so much money from the account that is used to pay for the labor and costs of getting the money from all of us. This increase seems kind of like paying my power bill and Rocky Mountain Power putting on an increase because they need to send me the bill. But I said to myself, that was only Poe kind of scary.
Langoliers?
Below was the change in assessment of the county municipal service fund. You know the one that pays for them to plow the snow, fix the roads, provide police protection and all that kind of stuff. That one was like watching King’s “The Langoliers.” You didn’t know for sure what was coming because you couldn’t see it, but the sound of the blood rushing through my head and the imaginary trees falling in the distance said something bad was there just the same.
That increase indeed was as reported. It was about eight times higher than last year moving my portion of the tax notice in that area from $23.44 to $189.23. That’s not much in the scheme of things when I look at my overall income, but for those that have very limited incomes and for those that own a lot of property, I imagine this can be a real blow.
More importantly, for many, it is the principal of the thing. They ask, “So what happens next year?”
And that’s a good question.
For many years the county has been able to keep its taxes much lower than some places because of the windfall from mineral lease monies. While some of that money has been used for brick and mortar projects, it has also supplemented the counties operations.
Not blindsided
At the time it seemed good for everyone. But everyone forgot that someday the amount of money we were getting for mineral lease would go down and at some point become non-existent, either by legislation from Congress or, heaven forbid, when we ran out of coal and gas. Well neither has happened. We haven’t run out of coal, just most of the coal we can get to easily enough to make it profitable to mine. There is still a lot of gas, but the natural gas wells that are producing have been declining. With low prices for gas, a lot of gas that is still in the ground is not worth going after. Not now anyway.
We saw some of it coming, but like that large barrel of candy that is sitting on your piano for tonight’s onslaught of trick or treaters, it eventually disappears even if one thinks there is more than enough there.
As a result, next week, and the week after, the county will be holding an open house to explain their position. Then on November 14 during the regular county commission meeting they will have a public hearing for people to comment. I’m sure there will be a lot of people at all of those meetings.
The county has its back, and yours, against a wall. If they decide not to raise taxes, services must be cut. That means less things get done that need to be done, and yes, maybe a few that you may think are unneeded. In addition, at the least some employees will have their hours reduced, but the more likely scenario is that some will lose their jobs. In our economy, at this time, that is a blow that comes after many we have suffered over the last few years. While it is true that government does not create wealth, cutting into what is contributed there will hurt all businesses and certainly some individuals.
Freddy Kruger has nothing on this situation.
The problem is that the way taxes in general are set up, depending where you are on the scale of everything, in staying with the Steven King theme, tax reductions are like “Christine” and they will turn on you. We just seem to be in a downward spiral when it comes to the government taking more and more of our money while they are gridlocked in making decisions that make a real difference in our lives. They always seem to want more money for less service.
I have a thought on how to solve this however. Maybe through a trick or a treat we can make Mexico pay for it.
Happy Halloween.
Freddy Kruger has nothing on the terror of tax time
Rick Shaw