August 2006 Weddings
caden
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
brideymcbriderson
Hey!
Were you the nestie that went to a townhall forum thing to fight for your job? If so, how did it go?
Re: brideymcbriderson
Yes, I did. My county supervisor was not actually all that nice. I think my H might have pissed her off because he asked the potential regressive effects of increasing the sales tax.* But all's well that ends well. The finance committee of the county board voted to restore funding to our jobs. The full board still has to vote, but it's unlikely that they will revolt against the finance committee. So yay! The board is also rejecting the county exec's plan to replace a bunch of parks employees with seasonal part-timers.
*The proposal is to lower the property tax and increase the sales tax. I've looked at the figures, and I think the sales tax is a better plan. Both are inherently regressive to some degree. But increasing the sales tax in order to take parks, transit and culture off the property tax rolls is the way to go because it would keep level or even lower most people's tax burdens but bring in about twice the revenue for those items. I'm so, so in favor of this.
Yay for you! Are you so proud of yourself?!
I'm surprised by your second paragraph after your opposition to the Fair Tax theory. I agree with you. Hope that doesn't deter you from liking it!
Well, ultimately, I'd favor progressive taxation over all forms. But the county is going to get its funds from either a sales tax or a property tax, both of which are regressive. I prefer sales tax to property tax because it's easier to adjust your lifestyle to account for sales tax. If your property jumps in value for reasons beyond your control, but your income doesn't go up in the same proportion, you can be really screwed. It's easier to cut back on consumer goods than it is to magically come up with cash for property tax increases that outpace income.
A sales tax forces those who visit our city and use our services to help contribute to them; a property tax does not. 60% of people who visit the zoo don't live in the county, but the zoo is funded through county property tax. Dumb. Most major metro transit systems are funded through sales tax. So when we go down to Chicago and buy something, we help fund CTA. But when people from Chicago come up here for Summerfest (or any of the other twenty bazillion festivals we have) or a Brewers-Cubs game, they don't help pay for our transit. We just had the Harley 105th anniversary celebration. Thousands upon thousands of people came here for that and went to the Springsteen concert at one of the parks, but nothing they bought helped pay for the park. Dumb.
But our county executive is completely opposed to this because he doesn't want taxes of any kind to go up since he's planning to run for governor in 2010. Nobody wants taxes to go up, but our transit system is facing critical cuts - as in, cuts that would leave about 50% of jobs in the county inaccessible by transit. Cutting transit is one sure way to NOT help people out of poverty. We already have huge income inequality; it kills me that he doesn't see that something like transit is a way to help people help themselves.
Sorry, I had to make my daily mass transit rant.
Do people not pay to use the city transit? What happened to solvent transit systems? Also, didn't you say this exec would cut property taxes and raise sales taxes? A cut & a raise should cancel each other out. That's what Palin did in Wasila and I supported it even though I hate tax increases b/c it's a restructuring of the tax system to one that makes more sense for the community. I also have a personal thing against property taxes b/c it makes me feel like I'm renting the property from the gov't. I haven't found a single person that agrees with me but I'm working on it.
p.s. Love your pro-sales tax recap! great stuff.
ETA: Tax restructuring in Wasilia it greatly increased revenues and capital investment. So there's a election-related proof for your case.
The problem - and, as I understand it, the main reason the county exec opposes the sales tax increase - is the complicated way this happens. The county doesn't have the authority to raise sales tax. It has to get enabling legislation from the state legislature. So this is an advisory referendum, by which the residents of the county would ask the county board to ask Madison for the enabling legislation. So the county board would wait to lower the property tax until they got the enabling legislation and passed the sales tax increase. He maintains that the board might not actually lower the property tax. This is a fair point, but we have to do something. Our county is pretty much built out. There is some revitalization to be done, and there are a few pockets of undeveloped land, but the tax base is not going to increase drastically.
As far as solvent transit systems, I'll go for that just as soon as we have solvent roads. Property tax is used to build roads, so why can't it be used to pay for transit? If we think gas was expensive earlier this year, it would be even more expensive if it was the sole source of funding for roads. According to one report, about 40% of the cost of roads is financed with property tax money, but less than 20% of transit is funded through property taxes. In order to fund roads solely through gas taxes, an additional 40.2 cents per gallon would need to be added. (Those figures are for this area.)