Property Bucket

In my area of the country, there is a new political debate raging about property taxes. There is a new petition to put an amendment to the state constitution to abolish property taxes. If enough signatures are collected, this becomes a ballot issue for the state population to vote on.

On the surface, the arguments for and against are simple. To the abolitionists (not a word I thought I would be typing in this day and age), the owners, many senior citizens are being taxed out of their homes and are, or will be in the future, struggling to stay in the home they bought or built and raised families in because the tax rates keep going up.

To the pro-tax folks, property taxes are a significant source of income to the state that funds schools and city services such as police and fire. If those taxes are no longer collected, services will suffer and the money must then come from other sources which would require raising sales taxes or other income taxes. That would make the state harder to promote to bring in other businesses to the state.

Here is my take on this.

As a property owner, I know taxes on my home and land can be a burden. I have worked all my life to have a safe and stable place to live and protect my family. I am not fundamentally against some property taxes to fund services, however there needs to be a cap on how much homeowners should be forced to pay out. Property taxes continue to rise with nearly every election cycle; someone wants more from the property owners to fund services or another school levy. Politicians should not be able to use property owners as a piggy bank for every idea that comes down the pipe.

Here's an idea. How about politicians and school boards and everyone else who uses property tax money become efficient in the use of those dollars. Communities are continually threatened with "we'll have to make cuts" if the new levies aren't passed. "This will go away, or that will go away". It's always the same excuse. But you know what I have found? Every time some entity has to make cuts, cuts get made and there is generally little overall effect to the whole of the service or business. They adapt. And they adapt because most of these entities are bloated because we are weak as a voting populace. Not every new idea needs to be funded with new dollars. Use the dollars you already collect for this new position or idea. Not every new school building needs to be a massive, sprawling campus with every new technological gadget that even NASA would be envious of having.

It's time to cap property taxes; not eliminate them completely, and make those asking for money from the voters to DOGE themselves and their services for the good of the tax payers.