Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Send the Governor an email/letter once a week from every member of your family.

Let’s send emails to our Governor: www.utah.gov/governor

Sample:

Subject: Your Utah budget priorities, Where is property tax reform?

Governor Huntsman,

Please accept my gratitude for your public service. You and your wonderful family are wholesome representatives for our State. And I know how your duties as Governor take you away from family, and the sacrifices you are making on our behalf. So thank you very much for your service Governor Huntsman.

But I wonder if you are in contact with the financial realities of every day citizen’s hardships living in Utah. I say that because of your wealthy background. And the fact that your recently announced budget priorities said nothing about the onerous and oppressive taxation we little people are enduring.

I know the new single rate or flat rate income/education tax is supposed to help. But we are ranked about sixth in the Nation for having the highest total taxes, even when half the State’s revenue comes from the Federal Government (and we also pay those Federal Taxes). However; property taxation has become so oppressive we are being forced (or…. to re-budget for my young family eliminating some items from our diet, school activities which charge fees for my children, and drop our health care plan among other cutbacks - just to afford the property taxes. {Tell your own story or a story about someone you know, like your mother or dad or grandparents trying to hang on praying for property tax reform and relief}) to consider cutting back on heating my small home, or stop taking some of my medications, and cutting back on buying food in order to pay the property taxes on my home. I wonder if you understand that it does not matter if I/we are ill, have massive hospital bills or have lost employment that we must pay our property tax bills all at once or suffer a 10.25% penalty fee and then have another 12% interest charged on top. And we have no idea what our property taxes are going to be from one year to the next. My property taxes went from ____ last year to _____ this year and we could not possibly budget for that amount of increase. So this last year was a lean Christmas and we continue to sacrifice, we think unfairly, for property taxes which seem way out of control and inaccurate.

The Statewide average property tax increase has been widely reported to be more than 22%, yet the rate of inflation and cost of living has increased only a little more than 2%. Why can’t we have our property assessments based on what we paid for our home with only inflation increases each year? Most other States have “purchase price” or “acquisition value” plus inflation property taxation with a cap.

Please make significant property tax reform a priority for our legislature to get us away from this old and unfair property tax law situation. We honor you and your family for your sacrifice on our behalf. Please honor our request for significant property taxation reform/relief.

Respectfully,
Name:
Phone:
Email:Address:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Huntsman appears to know that property taxes are a problem and says he will "look at them with an open mind." But then he goes on to say that lots of things need (taxpayer) funding. I get the impression that he really doesn't get it and will leave the poor old property tax payer to keep paying for all of the his high priority, big government spending ideas.

At times it seems that Huntsman thinks he is still running the family business and giving the profits to charity. What he doesn't seem to get it that government is not his family business and the "profits" which are being forcibly extracted from homeowners are not his to give to his favorite charities or, in this case, government programs.

D-Bell is definitely on the right track. We need to let the Governor know that people want property tax REFORM. We have ceded the territory totally to all of those pushing him to spend, spend, spend.