There I said it. Taxes are not a bad thing! I just don't know why our party seems to be scared to say this. In 2008 my little rural town in southern Illinois voted 57% for John McCain. In the same election almost 70% of us voted to raise our property taxes. Yes we voted to raise our own taxes and for McCain in the same election. I want to talk about that and also the fact this isn't the first time we've done something like this.
About ten years ago we voted to raise our taxes. There is this little community college just outside our town. Back in the 80s when I lived here its initials, BAC, were mocked as "bring a crayon." Some local person had this idea if we invested some money in the place, build some new buildings, and hired better teachers, the place could make money and be a resource for our community. So we voted to raise our taxes.
Now every building on campus is less then a decade old. A wide variance of classes. And it is moving from a two year community college to a four year college. The library, which anybody can use, is so amazing if I took you there you'd think you were at the University of Illinois.
About the same time we had another tax hike. So even though my town of 5,500 just got our first stoplight a few years ago, I walk two blocks and every 20 minutes a bus will pick me up and take me where ever I want to go, including the Metro line that smartly sits right next to the college.
Around 5 years ago our city raised the taxes on businesses, which are all locally owned. Pretty much not a single owner was against this. Know what we did with that money we raised, we built parks. Let me say that again, we built parks. We hired local artist to create sculptures and paint murals on the side of walls. Even started an advertising campaign to get people to come to our town to shop.
The tax was supposed to lapse (sound familiar) after five years but you know what, we decided to keep it.
I've got lightened tennis courts. More then a dozen baseball fields (also some of them are lighted). When many cities this summer were closing swimming pools or raising the fees we expanded ours. Did I mention it is free.
Now back to the new high school. There were a lot of town hall meetings before the election. You would have maybe thought it would be sold as we have to "do it for our children, they are our future."
Nope, not so much. See I live in a rural area, which means we got a lot of land. We can't built houses fast enough. I am betting when the '10 Census numbers come out my town will have doubled in size.
See strange thing, folks that buy houses tend to have or plan to have children and schools factor into where they decided to buy. Well my town has some of the best schools in not only Illinois, but the entire nation.
So we need a new $60,000,000 high school to handle all the new students. Needing a new school cause of all the new students means one thing. People are moving to our town and buying houses. They are paying taxes and shopping at the local businesses.
The school is an economic engine for our town. It is that simple and about 70% of the population got it. Or as one lady said at a town hall meeting, "you have to pay for nice stuff and don't we all like nice stuff."
I like to think us small town Midwestern folks are pretty darn practical and sane. But is this concept of spending money to improve a community really that hard of a sell?
Oh, and that school, from when the ground broke, we built it in less then a year. It opens in a few weeks. I've not seen the inside yet, but I hear it is like something out of Star Trek.
Update: You know I can't believe I forgot to mention this. Property taxes and businesses taxes, with all I mentioned above, are still LOWER then every other town in the county!