Dear Hecate:
Beg Borrow or Steal. That's what we have to do in our city because of 2 1/2. We beg private foundations and donors to fund our innovative education or job training programs for our youth and then can't raise the necessary funds from the property tax to sustain them. We borrow from our own children's future by not being able to raise the taxes to support smaller classes, early education and afterschool programs. We steal from other city programs like garbage pick upand recycling programs, or pothole repair or senior citizen transportation programs when we tell the Mayor that public education is a higher priority. I'm sick of it. Frankly I think my property tax bill of $2,000 a year is a bargain since it includes education for my 5 kids, a police and fire department, garbage pick up, snow plowing, sewerage disposal and clean water, just to name a few city services we use. I would be happy to pay another $250 a year to know that all the kids in the city had modern text books and fully equiped labs and the garbage was picked up twice a week in my neighborhood.
Hecate says
You have a choice. Get used to it, or do something about it. First of all you are not alone. More and more folks in small towns and big cities are beginning to make the connection between what they pay in taxes and what they get for it. And once they do the consumer in them realizes "What a bargain." Too many candidates for public office run with one leg on a no new taxes platform and the other leg on cleaning up government (better garbage pick up, better snow removal, better schools.)If they win they find themselves split in half because guess what!! Cleaning up government and making the schools and the public works department better and more efficient and effective costs more money and that, folks means more taxes.
Imagine what your city could do if everyone in your city was willing to pay another %10 increase in their property tax.
Who is Hecate?
Hecate is a Greek Goddess who served as a guide and coach at the crossroads of Hades, where after crossing the River Styx, Greek souls found themselves facing three choices: the Elysian Fields, abode of the great and heroic; the Fields of Asphodel, for all who had led a blameless but ordinary life; or to Tartarus, a sunless land of punishment for criminals.
Hecate's best known role in Greek mythology was guiding Persephone, the goddess of spring, on her annual journeys between Hades and Earth. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hecate is portrayed as a nurturing and protective guide for Persephone on those annual journeys.
