For what it's worth, my letter to the Alderman's office after I got our tax bill the other day...
Dear Alderman Moore,
We saw you on Chicago Tonight and received your email about the new tax proposals from Mayor Daley and the County.
We also just got our tax bill yesterday- it went up 25% from last year. We own a 2-flat that we live in and rent out one unit. We are already taking a loss on the property and this just adds to it.
In my opinion, raising property taxes more than what we have already experienced this year is unacceptable. 25% in a year and then more?
I want to see government trying not to waste and cutting the fat paychecks for administrators (and family and friends) and then maybe another increase would be something that wouldn't make me sick to my stomach. I thought that public servants were here to serve the public and not themselves.
Yet, again and again I see stories in the Trib about Todd Stroger and his friends and family getting cushy jobs and the Governor's wife getting real estate commissions from people who have state contracts.
IT STINKS. And it looks BAD. I guess they don't care what it looks like to us, the public.
They take and take and then they wonder why the public doesn't seem to give a damn anymore.
Anyway, this is turning into a bit of a tirade, but if you and your office will challenge this type of thing, more power to you.
Business as usual stinks. That's how I and lots of people feel. Let's see some real effort to conserve and spend wisely before we raise property taxes again.
Signed, Jocelyn M.
9 comments:
LOVE YOUR COMENT BUT WOULD HAVE ADDESSED IT TO ALL THE ALDERMAN IN GENERAL-
ANOTHER HOME OWNER--
Recently someone from the media inquired about getting a list of all the people, places and things that get a share of the City tax dollars.
Nothing like that exists.
Can you believe that? NO accountability whatsoever.
Our taxes went up $57.50 per month.
I am grateful I am able to pay the increase as I have a roof over my head and I am warm at night. I am safe and snug like a bug in a rug.
Salaries go up, real-estae values go up, bread prices go up.....come on all you whiners. Life is tough. When you grow up and accept that everything else is just gravy.
We own a two-flat too!
What exactly does your rental income cover?
Ours covers our mortgage and our taxes. The heat and maintenance are on us!
Get over it!
To Made in Rogers Park,
So you are "snug as a bug in a rug"?
How nice for you.
For many of your fellow citizens, this is not the case.
Median incomes, adjusted for inflation, have DROPPED 1% since 1999. Mine has stayed level while every thing I pay for has ratcheted northward in cost, and my situation is typical.
Other people are confronting income stagnation in combination with rising costs, and many of these costs are driven by our leaders' endless greed.
I'm sure all the greedy pols who vote themselves 18% pay hikes, pad municipal and state payrolls with relatives in do-nothing jobs that pay 6-digit incomes, and give the city away to cronies and corporate contributors by means of mulitmillion-dollar tax breaks, wish that all the citizens were as supine as you are.
They wish we would all just "stop whining" and lay down for 25% tax increases on their phones, their property, and everything else they own or buy.
You sound like a smug idiot. How our greedy, wasteful, payroll-padding, grafting politicians must wish the rest of us were like you.
To North Coast
I live on a fixed income
You obviously don't understand the meaning of GRATITUDE
I am truly grateful I have a place to live, a roof over my head and that I can eliminate a meal or two out with friends so I can pay the extra tax bill per month
I don't raise the rent on my tennant
I appreciate a good tennant and the devil I know is better than the one I don't
I am not on the political relative
I have worked very hard all my life, I share many parts of my life and for that ZI am grateful.
I am grateful I can walk to the lake and view a sunrise
I happen to like where I live.
I happen to know it isn't perfect however as long as I can manage on my own I will stay here
I am far from being an idiot and I honestly don't appreciate your disrespect.
You and I both know that yes the taxes went up and the sun also rises.
Quit whining because everyone in this neighborhood doesn't live up to your self imposed expectations
As I said, you are a lay-down for bootstomping, greedy, rapacious taxing authorities who think that the citizenry exist for no other reason but to line the back pockets of political cronies, bankroll corporate welfare 'gimmes' worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars while small business fold and die for having to subsidize their larger, politically connected competition.
Sorry, but I am not "grateful" for having a roof over my head that I struggle to earn, and I am sure as hell not "grateful" for the portion of MY money that I get to retain for my own benefit.
I am not grateful to give our aldermen an 18% pay raise while the business I work for is slowly sinking, and the industry I work in is facing massive contraction.
I am not grateful to pay for monument building (block 37) and corporate welfare (TIF)while the small business I work for receives not a dime's benefit from this wasteful crap but is brutally taxed to pay for it, and the necessary civic services that make a city liveable, like police and public transit, are deprived of necessary funding.
I am NOT grateul to poor money into the back pockets of giga-rich sports team owners in the form of subsidized stadiums when I can't afford to take my nephews to the games.
I am NOT grateful to be able to pay for the luxuries and perks, and guaranteed, risk-free prifits in the billions, for our greedy, unprincipled ruling class and their wealthy cronies while I give up one small luxury after the other and sit here wondering how in the hell I'm going to fund my own retirement.
A homeowner shouldn't have to be "grateful" to pay the government obscene rent on the house he supposedly "owns".
I'll agree with you on just one thing: it's time to stop whining and start SCREAMING, before thousands more people are blasted out of their houses by the taxes, and more businesses have to fold, or move to the burbs, because the tax hit on small commercial properties is just too crippling
We can't take any more. Homeowners and business owners are at the limits of what they can pay. The $4 a month extra on my phone will add another brick to a load vastly increased by massive increases in food prices due to surging fuel prices.
And I'm not poor. What of the working poor, who will even less be able to afford rents driven by increases in property taxes? What of the elderly who see their house taxes double, and believe me when I tell you this is happening, for I have talked to three elderly people who have gotten tax bills for DOUBLE what their old bills.
I'm with north coast.
There's a pretty big difference between being grateful and bending over.
And Wants, Just like Craig, you bend over and take it all of the time
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