Ravenous for revenue, spendthrift governments will raise your taxes and also turn to other avenues to raise cash, such as charging fees for doing what governments already are paid to do.
In China, corrupt local governments charge residents with hundreds of fees, including fees for catching rats and for the light bulbs in street lights.
In the United States, citizens of Duluth, Minnesota just discovered a new street improvement fee in their August utility bills. The street fee now joins other utility fees of water, sewer, storm water and street lights, which can total nearly $50 a month.
And those fees are on top of residents’ property taxes, which should lead one to ask what exactly property taxes are for.
Tom Steward writes for Watchdog.org, Sept. 2, 2014, that the city of Duluth charges 24,200 residential customers $5 per month and 3,800 commercial customers $40 to $240 a month to fill potholes and repair cracks. Duluth even charges nonprofits for the curbside upkeep outside their doors.
The new street repair fee is expected to raise about $3 million per year. The city had considered raising property taxes about 30% over two years to fund road repairs before going in the direction of a street utility fee.
Duluth needs to fill a $16 million financial pothole left over from previous street upgrades. Compound that overdue bill with the Fond Du-Luth downtown tribal casino pulling the plug on $6 million in annual payments, which had gone for street work.
One of three City Council members opposing the street utility calls it a “casino revenue replacement fee” that will further stifle economic development and raise the cost of living. Howard Hanson, a council member who’s proposed a city-owned casino to make up the lost revenue, said, “I’m told owners of multiple properties, in particular, a restaurant group in Duluth, is paying upwards of $20,000 a year for this new tax. And that’s driving up the cost of our goods and services.”
Even city councilors supporting the fee acknowledge its broad unpopularity. “Most of what I’m hearing from people is, ‘Don’t do it, we don’t like it, find a different way,’ and it’s hard to come up with a different way,” Barb Russ said before voting for the street fund at the city council’s June 23 meeting.
Worse still, the new street fee won’t be the last.
Already, the Duluth City Council is thinking of more taxes and fees.
City councilor Emily Larson said next year when the new street fee comes up for reauthorization, there’ll be a virtual menu of local taxes on the table. Larson said at the decisive June meeting, ”Maybe that can include a local gas tax or a wheelage tax, maybe it could include a dedicated quarter percent sales tax. There are other options that we can and should be pursuing. In the meantime, this gets us one very small step forward.”
Jim Booth, a financial planner who’s running for county commissioner, said, “Government has to start living within its means, instead of this thinking that we have an unlimited amount of money. We don’t. And it’s exactly the people the politicians say they’re watching out for — the low- and moderate-income people — that they’re hurting.”
I wonder how many illegals from the ongoing “border surge” has the Duluth city government blithely accepted?
~Eowyn