Out here in the sticks we get to pay about $5,000 a year in property taxes but we don't get sewer, or water, and never had city supplied trash containers, but now we no longer get limb or cuttings removal either. And just to make sure we don't burn our yard debris piles they prohibited open burning under penalty of $2,500 "gotcha fines," I just see this as another revenue grab. And, worse, City officials just wrote a letter to the Commonwealth opposing any regulations that would finally start holding builders, developers, farmers, livestock owners, and home owners financially responsible for failing to control stormwater, sediment, and nutrient runoff from their own sites, farms, pastures, and yards. These city "leaders" would rather ignore the problems and then turn around and tax the entire population to mitigate area flooding problems and try to clean up all the waterways that they have let their developer buddies and big farmers destroy through uncontrolled discharges into our ditches and waterways. The ultimate result of this "looking the other way" will be even more expensive and massive civil engineering and water reclamation projects to bring down the high nutrient, heavy metals, pesticides, fertilizers, and animal waste levels which turn our water toxic, feed the algae blooms, and contribute to biological oxygen demand (BOD) which occurs when organic/ vegetative matter is allowed to reach our waterways where it rots and eats oxygen in the process, driving dissolved oxygen levels down to levels where only scavenger fish can survive.
This post offered by a THINKING taxpayer.
7 comments:
Sure! As long as the builders and developers can ignore the direct impacts of the drainage flooding off of their sites and force all those related costs and down gradient flooding to be charged to the public, they are happy! No surprise there! But as soon as the State finally starts holding them responsible for the damage that they refuse to control, they start threatening the politicians they keep on retainer that unless these politicians take action to prevent them from being held accountable, future political "donations" (read, "payments for favors granted and advance payments for performance expected") will dry up! Bingo! The politicians wake up to this tune and we again witnessed their knee jerk and mindless response to Richmond.
But what good does it do to complain to our Council members? Are not most bought and paid for already, and lack the basic knowledge or interest to understand where just looking out for their own political interests is actually harming the interests of the people they pretend to represent. Tell me one member of Council whose eyes wouldn't start rolling into the back of their heads if I even tried to explain stormwater runoff, pre-and post-development hydrographs, storm water best management practices, or how biological oxygen demand drives oxygen down to levels where fish can't survive! Who is intelligent enough to understand that simply by forcing farmers to leave a 25 meter dense vegetative buffer between their own fields and adjacent waterways, most of the farm and pasture runoff could be prevented? They don't know, they don't want to know, and they don't care! End of story!
The city proposed then implemented the elimination of "bulk" trash pickups. For our area, that translated to lawn refuse and large boxes, for the most part. Their solution in our area was to tell us to lease more trash containers ($50 per) or order bulk pickup for $20 per (6X6X6) (more if larger).
Immediately I saw this as a REDUCTION in a basic service and wondered if anyone would complain before the budget passed. (I didn't because quite frankly I've lost the stomach to keep butting my head into a wall.) My take is before you eliminate a basic service, eliminate discretionary, or at least lower priority, budget items first. Surprise, surprise, the cut stayed in the budget and we lost the service (obviously we still have the one-arm bandit container pickup service, but not everything fits into those containers). Come July 1, I noticed that virtually everyone on my street put out their lawn clippings (per usual) along with their containers. The city, of course, left 'em. No surprise to me, but a surprise to most uninformed (their fault) neighbors, some of whom got kinda irritated by the loss, but not so much that they formally complained to the city (at least as far as I know). Recently a neighbor told me about the bureaucratic labyrinth he had to go thru to get his roughly 10 bags of bagged yard stuff picked up. Took him a trip to the treasurer's office and several days wait before it happened.
And what is your complaint? You asked for lower taxes and leadership and that is what you where given!
The budget was tight this year and we all know that something had to give. The search was on for how to make it all fit and do it with the best ideas that spread the pain fairly. Now that there is a cost to the user for picking up their larger trash, rationing will insure that it is done when needed not just when it is convienent.
It is time to decide what is important to Suffolk and that has been done and more with these budget decisions! The few dollars this will cost the few, is not even near what you all tolerated with the increase in your assessments and taxes over the last six years. So go get another can for $50 and fill it and be happy.
Not surprise farmers receive compensation from the state for buffers between forested, shoreline and cultivated areas. The homeowner however receives not one dime and is constantly under the scrutiny of local, state and federal agencies. Call Councilman-Development Consultant Charles Brown if you need help with this issue.
I talked to my councilman the honorable councilman Brown and he tells me that this is really nothing. They are going to let us have free pick-up once a year for free. He tells me this is just more complaining by those who always complaine. I never have much to put out anyway and if I have something big, I just dump it out on dill road. Ben dooing it for years and now it is even more needed. My councilman said that is how to do it and the City will pick it up for free anyway.
Thanks to the honerable councilman Brown for his advise and just keep dumping it along side the road and city will pick it up for you at no cost.
To Anonymous, Aug 25, 2:18 PM
You sound like you could be a city employee, but for sure you're uninformed regarding the real property tax situation in Suffolk, because for quite some time, it's not been about asking for tax decreases, it been about asking for affordable increases—typically in vain.
Take a look at these facts then judge whether real property taxes have been decreasing/affordable in Suffolk:
2003-4 Average tax increases 6.8%
2004-5 Increases 10.3%
2005-6 Increases 14%
2006-7 Increases 14% (wanted 28% initially!!!)
2007-8 Increases 9.5% (cum + 68% over 5 years!!!)
2008-9 Increases 1.1% (finally affordable, but much accumulated excess has been paid—and continues to be paid)
2009-10 No Change 0%.
Now I pose a question. Did average incomes increase anywhere near those rates from 2003-4 to 2007-8? Negative. On average they increased 2.5% per year over that period. And to me, that’s pushing taxpayers into an increasingly unaffordable position. If proof is desired, ask someone who depends on social security.
And taking it a step further, during that period of unaffordable/excessive increases, did the typical homeowner experience any increase in service levels? I believe the answer from most would be “no.” And now we can’t even get our lawn refuse and boxes picked up without incurring more cost and/or inconvenience.
I say that’s wrong. Trash pickup is a basic service and before the city leaders reduce it, and thus make getting rid of trash an exercise in futility and difficulty and extra expense, it should first eliminate/cut some discretionary budget items. Heck, many citizens would have no trouble developing such a list, and they wouldn’t be impacted by the loss in the least.
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