The city vigoriusly defends it's bottled water tax. "We have reviewed the legal issues," said Law Department spokeswoman Jenny Hoyle. "We believe this tax is legal and are prepared to defend it in court." Source.
Blognotes: How's this for a kick in the tax-payer ass. The city now taxes you for bottled water, then the city spends your tax-payer money defending itself in court for taxing you. Wonder how many bottle's of water that's going to cost us?
17 comments:
THE CITY COUMCIL SHOULD BE ABLE TO GIVE THEMSELVES A NICE RAISE FROM THIS BOTTLED WATER TAX-
they already did
latest raise kicked in tues
they gave themselves automatic, annual cost of living increses
Hmmm discouraging people to use bottled water which ultimately ends up to hundreds of tons of plastic in landfills each year.
or
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0006MQCA4/ref=ord_cart_shr?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance
Which yes, has waste in filters but far less than plastic water
bottles.
And more importantly?
It saves you friggin' money.
But that is common sense... which seems to be lacking 'round these parts.
THANKS HUGH-
THEY CAN USE THIS LUMP ON NEXT YEARS-
PROBABLE NEXT YEAR THEY WILL TAX TOLIET PAPER---
They will probably tax us the walk down the streets, don't put anything past the city council
i am all for "sin taxes", and bottled water is an environmental nightmare. big corporations are buying up municipal water supplies, using up oil to bottle it, and to truck it around. then selling it back to you. it should be taxed out of existence.
I'm going to sound like an old man here, but why does everyone these days have to carry water, coffee, and food around at all times? Everyone's stuffing their gullets and clutching bottles everywhere you look. In my day, we ate at home, at the table, and drank water from the tap, or a drinking fountain. You have coffee from a mug, sitting down somewhere, not in the middle of the street. I can't imagine spending 100 times the cost of a glass of tap water just to get it in a sealed bottle.
I can hear it coming: "You had a tap! In my day, we had to crawl 12 miles to the river every morning at 3 o'clock to get a gallon of water..." ;^)
No, but as a kid on the farm we did have a well that need filling every month or so.
Plus, we had to share bath water and not flush the toilet until it was darn near piled to the top of the water line. Ah, the good old days back on the farm.
"Hmmm discouraging people to use bottled water which ultimately ends up to hundreds of tons of plastic in landfills each year."
ok, so tax all plastic bottles
the green angle is bs, it's all about the revenue
LOVE THE RESPONSE-
LETS HOPE THEY TAX CHEETOS BAGS NEXT AS THE BAGS ARE THE BIGGEST LITTER ON THE STREETS-
Craig, your comments about the water conservations measures on your family's farm.....
Yours is not the only family that had to do that. Atlanta just had its first rain in months, and now has about enough potable water to last 90 days, instead of 70. Imagine- 5 million people with 90-100 days worth of potable water. The southeast is in the grips of the worst drought in 500 years.
The U. S. is experiencing water shortfalls in places where this was never before a problem, and the southwest is even more parched than usual.
We in this area, on the other hand, have a real advantage. The Great Lakes contain 20% of the world's fresh water supply, and this will give this area an incredible economic edge over the next 30 years as water shortages become more frequent and severe. I expect that economically depressed Great Lakes cities in Michigan, Ohio, and New York will experience stunning revivals because of our special advantage, and I would like for this city to retain that advantage.
So I feel very selfish about this. I know this sounds mean and selfish, but I don't feel we should have to share our water with western cities that wouldn't exist if it weren't for irrigation and water diversion projects that WE helped pay for, to the destruction of all our old northern cities.
Only to alleviate a true humanitarian crises, should we permit any encroachment on our water supply. If you want sunshine, you can go to the southwest. If you want water, come back here.
We have a 9-state water pact with other Great Lakes states and Canadian provinces on the Great Lakes, that is extremely protective of our water supply, in that it strictly prevents anyone outside our watershed from having a claim on our water. Do you know that there was a plan being floated for a few years that would pipe our water out to the parched Western States?
The only loophole is that it permits water bottlers to take as much water out of the lake in the form of bottled water as they please, to be shipped and sold elsewhere. We need to close this loophole.
Therefore, I believe in taxing bottled water out of existance. If people want an emergency water supply, recycle your milk jugs and/or juice bottles- just clean and sterilize them and put up a supply of water in them.
When racing we consume gallons and gallons of water and gatorade. We, as you say, use old milk jugs, fill them up with tap water and buy the powdered mix.
At home I use my grandmothers old glass pitchers, fill them up, put them in the fridge. One of the few old-fashioned things I continue to do. I can't say I've ever bought water unless I was in dire need. Then I bought it in a gallon jug.
Now, back to the question at hand. How much will it cost the tax payers to fight this lawsuit in court?
It's a pity it has to be fought in court.
Nobody questions the city's right to tax property owners right out of the homes they struggled to earn. Now THAT'S something we need to fight in court, on the grounds that you can't be said to truly own a property you must pay taxes on.
Why does the city even have to fight a "consumption" tax in court?
I personally support a tax on all plastic containers, or a deposit requirement, as long as we have a path by which we can recycle this stuff. For example, the of plastic that passes through a one-person household in the form of containers for common stuff like toiletries and food is incredible. How about a deposit for this stuff, like .10 a container? You take your containers back, clean, and you get .10 each refunded. This stuff is made from petroleum by-products and thus has value.
Michigan's been doing bottle and can deposits (10 cents) for years now, and I lived there and loved it. Any time I went grocery shopping, I took back a bag of bottles and cans and put them in the Kansmacker machines, which spit out a voucher redeemable at checkout either as a credit against what I bought or as cash. Easy peasy, and keeps the stuff out of the trash stream. I still hate throwing cans and bottles away here in Illinois.
"the green angle is bs, it's all about the revenue"
Not exactly. The reason bottled water is being taxed instead of other beverages is because the big companies like Dasani and Aquafina use "locally sourced" water -- which is just a fancy way of saying Chicago tap water. People are paying $1+ for their own plain tap water in a 16 oz. plastic bottle, and then the bottle ends up in a landfill. It's ridiculously wasteful. At least Coke and other bottled drinks offer something you can't get basically for free out of your own sink.
I agree with Scott -- Illinois should have a bottle bill like Michigan has had for about 30 years. You never see cans and bottles in the trash in Michigan -- they're worth real money.
I'm in favor of the tax. I wish it was $0.25 instead of a nickel or whatever.
Seriously, use a filter pitcher and a reusable Nalgene bottle.
A return to bottle deposits in Illinois is long overdue.
and on the issue of western states eyeing the Great Lakes as a new water source...
I don't feel we should have to share our water with western cities that wouldn't exist if it weren't for irrigation and water diversion projects that WE helped pay for, to the destruction of all our old northern cities.
I totally agree! Last time I was visiting Denver, they had lots of planter medians along a lot of city streets that contained water-intensive plants instead of native, drought-resistant species. Every morning the sprinklers would come on and run for the better part of an hour. How many millions of gallons of water are wasted there (on public and private land), and on the lawns and golf courses of the southwest? That does not exactly make me sympathetic.
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