Friday, July 21, 2006

One against a tax increase

Most of this area's political establishment seems to have lined up in support of a tax increase for a new juvenile home. However, there is at least one dissenting voice--Kalamazoo City Commissioner Mary Balkema. From the Gazette:

Balkema cast the only dissenting vote, saying there are schools in Kalamazoo County that are older than the juvenile home and aren't being replaced and that the county Board of Commissioners should have been setting aside money annually to finance the project.

City property owners already are paying the county's highest millage rate, Balkema said, and "in this hard economic time, I cannot, in all good conscience, support this millage at this time.''
From what I have heard, a new juvenile home is needed. The question is whether a tax increase is really necessary to pay for it, or whether spending could be cut somewhere else instead.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's amazing, I'm a conservative Republican and I would take any liberal blog over this one. I'm sorry guys, you just have to do better if you want to help the GOP.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, its too bad when the government swoops in to steal even more of our property that it isn't a more interesting story. I suppose the government's second best tool to force is complacency.