So your solution? Raise taxes by 10% and then try to freeze taxes for a subset comprising 30% of homeowners. That isn't good fiscal or long range sustainable planning.
If you freeze someone's taxes, then their rights to vote to raise other people's taxes should be frozen. It is wrong on the face of it to eliminate responsibility while maintaining rights that enable others to then vote up the taxes for those whose taxes are not likewise frozen, no matter what scheme you could come up with to "pay for it" or justify it.
What if we just freeze everyone over 65 from running for and holding City of Richardson Council Office? I would never agree to that (I feel many able people are retiring too early as it is and it harms people and society and puts a stigma on us), but I also can't agree with any scheme as someone is proposing to freeze taxes for some which will wind up raising them even more on others. Obviously I do not agree with the 30% shielding either.
Taxes are too high for everyone because of waste and tax money not going where the money was intended to go, but no senior subset of the population, no senior person, has lost their home in Richardson, Texas, by not being able to pay city property taxes unless they failed to realize or utilize Texas law. The Texas Tax Code Section 33.06 allows taxpayers 65 of age or older to defer their property taxes until their estates are settled after death. For those trying to convince seniors to demand a senior tax freeze outright, I ask them to name senior citizens in Richardson who have been put out of their home by the City of Richardson for their failure to pay their city property tax bill.
Now, people, no matter what age, do sometimes have to move to be able to live within their means, or changing lifestyle. If you can only afford a $180,000 home, then you can't afford to live in a $395,000 house. If you can only afford a $135,000 home, then you can't afford to live in a two million dollar house. But that is reality. I would like to live in a certain 1.2 million dollar home, but because I can't and don't want to afford it right now, I do not do so. If taxes are too high in Richardson for 30% of the population, then they are too high.
(I won't even get into the exclusivity that allows those on the government payroll to live in exclusive communities when us working schmoes don't "qualify" but yet we help foot the bill.)
I do agree to finding a way to cut the nonsense and roll taxes back for every one, say as much as 30% because I believe that is how much waste and nonsense can be cut out, and still achieve more, for more people.
And certainly not raise taxes (padding bonds and the budget and having to now pay for all the deferred employee retirement plan and health benefits obligations).
"Savings" are being found in the budget, but what do you know, they are being absorbed by regrowing the just reduced city budget.
