Pages

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

RAMSEY - FRANCHISE FEES - A friend forwarded an email. And the post is a two-for. WOOFING. Do not expect dogs to understand decimal points.

Matt Look
Yesterday via iOS.

To all my Ramsey Facebook friends.
TONIGHT, the Ramsey
City Council is holding a public hearing, regarding their bright idea to impose a "franchise fee" on your gas and electric bills. YOUR ANNUAL cost would be $200. The average house wi...ll see a 30+% increase in taxes (fees are taxes)! Please, please, please pack the city hall chambers and voice your opposition. Explain how the reckless spending of the past (Taj Majal)does not constitute an emergency today, WHILE, hiring more staff and claiming there is no money for roadsSee More

I do not know if that was a forward, or a cut from a Facebook page. Hating Facebook, I have no verification intention beyond posting what was sent. I would guess it's a cut from a page.

NEXT, AND SEPARATE: Taxpayer League Watchdog barking:

The Anoka County Pravda tells us that a governmental body called the Counties Transit Improvement Board (CTIB) toured the Ramsey Town Center Project recently to see all the economic development that has taken place in the past many years, as the project has lurched from crisis to crisis in search of occupants of this planned, sustainable urban village in the heart of Anoka County.

The article tells us the members of the CTIB heard from Ramsey bureaucrats about all the neat and swell prosperity being generated.

For example, a briefing was held in some apartment building, where a bureaucrat from the city with the title of "Development Services Manager" told tales of economic development in the apartment's "outdoor living room," complete with a salt water pool and grills.

Wow. $317 million for an apartment building with grills and a pool? Just what the county needs.

But, wait. There's more!

How about a church auditorium? Church is cool and all, but churches don't pay property taxes. And while they build souls, they don't build wealth.

What about the new VA clinic? Serving our veterans is important, but government can only spend money diverted from the private economy. There is no net gain in wealth.

But wait! Wait! What about the McDonald's? Getting an Egg McMuffin in convenient fashion is nice, but those aren't the jobs that build a prosperous tax base.

Heck, the article even mentions with a hint of melancholy that Super America won't be coming, after all.

I guess we'll all have to look for donuts and gas at the other 37 convenience stores on Highway 10.

Where does that hound get $317 million? Best guess, not invented as a number, just off by a power of ten. VA fact check, well, dogs are limited though lovable as pets. Church auditorium. Have not seen it. But take the dog's woof as true, there must be one - if not there, cooking - and if there is to be one, the dog forgot, it likely would not be in the taxbase. Exempt. No big help, if planned.

Earlier Ramsey franchise fee woof-woof, where it is unclear what's a quote from Jason Tossey and what's dog-think, since the pup understands neither quotation marks, nor indentation.

-------------------
In disliking franchise fees, I find myself in alien territory ...