Tax me for what I use not what I own

Take a walk around your neighborhood and you will notice the pride we take in our homes. High home ownership in a metro area is known to increase the overall quality of life in the area.

Currently local governments are heavily taxing our homes through property taxes. They need the revenue to run our local government operations. The taxes are needed but we are taxing the wrong items. Tax me for what I use not for what I own.

The news is full of cities that are running low on natural resources needed to function. These natural resources are water, natural gas, electricity, and removal of trash. One minute our city government wants us to use our water because it is a revenue center. When a drought occurs, the city creates watering restrictions and/or bans certain watering activities. We need a long-term water reduction program to help us conserve our limited water resources. Note: We are all down stream from someone else. If we abuse water, down stream does not have the needed water to function. This can easily be said about all of the other limited resources we use daily.

Our Solution to Changing Local Government Taxes

We need to freeze our property taxes at 2006 levels. Any increases to our taxes should be placed on our limited resources (water, electricity, natural gas, and removal of trash). As the costs of these items increase residents will began to conserve them. Our five to ten year goal should be to reduce our per person usage of limited resources by 50 percent. Programs and new technologies could help us reach our goals. Note: We in Minnesota with over 10,000 lakes do not have a current shortage of water but some cities in the USA are already in a survival mode praying for rain to come soon. We do not want to wait until we are out of the limited resources to begin saving them.

How do we make the above solutions a reality?

First local governments need to embrace the new system of collection of local taxes. We need to also teach residents on ways to reduce the usage of our limited resources.

Take Action On Your Own

If you agree with this solution posted on the website, you can help by doing one or more of the following:

Print the solution and send to the appropriate government or other organizations that can assist in implementing the solution.
Modify your lifestyle to reflect your beliefs.
Support organizations that can help make the solution a reality.
Get involved.
How to find your elected officials: TownHall.com has a section where you can find out who is your elected officials in your area.

Articles You Should Read on the Subject

September 2002 National Geographic "Earth's Fresh Water Under Pressure" and "The Great Lakes Are They Shrinking?"

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Email: dholm@icebergahead.org