...even though he did not vote for the budget, I have spoken with him about this garbage fee and he truly believes this fee system is a more fair system than what we had before. We had a very interesting discussion about it the other evening. Fortunately for Paul, he will actually save money under the fee system. But that will not be the case for most property owners in this community.It seems Paul Esslinger does support the fee.
I think Bryan Bain for a large part, and Burke Tower for a lesser amount, deserve a lot of credit for really trying to beat the fee. This is a truly regressive fee, as is outlined by Cheryl Hentz when she points out that Paul Esslinger will save money on the fee system.
Why? We discussed this in the City Academy. If you look at the garbage pick up as part of the entire budget, it is currently (my numbers may be off a little, but they should be close - I am going from memory here) about $75 on a $100,000 property. Being that your tax rate is based on the worth of your house, if you own a house worth $200,000 then your portion of tax that goes to garbage collection is $150.
What this means is that if your house is worth less that $160,000 then your share of the total amount of money paid to the city in taxes and fees will go up because of this fee, if your house is worth more that $160,000 then your amount of the share of property taxes for this go down.
According to the US Census Bureau, the median home worth in Oshkosh is $86,300. That means this fee increases the share of government paid by everyone in Oshkosh with a home worth of TWICE Oshkosh's median.
Yes, that is correct, the garbage fee is just another way to move the cost of government from the rich to the poor. And, in this case, taking from both the poor and middle for the wealthy.
Good old Robin Hood in reverse all over again.
Shameless.
This is the exact opposite effect that the proposed County Sales Tax would have had. Because of the property tax reductions that went along with the sales tax, it would have reduced the burden on the poorer among us.
We need to really look at how we finance the government locally, as well as nationally. We are seeing this pattern over and over again.
Everyone should pay their fair share of government, the wealthy too.
6 comments:
Paul Esslinger has spoken against regressive taxes in the past. But now he favors this garbage fee. He can't have it both ways. You are 100% correct that the more well-to-do in our city will be on the winning end of the stick here yet they are the ones that can most afford this fee. Some people are saying they're seeing a whole new side to Esslinger they don't like even though they think he's usually watching out for us.
Just to clarify...
I didn't post this as a criticism of Paul Esslinger as much as to use his support of this measure as a jumping point to a discussion of the unfairness of this tax.
There were others on the board who supported it, and only two that seemed to try to be working to get past it.
Yes, Bryan Bain and Burk Tower. But more Bain than anyone else.
You are right, Bryan seemd to be the only guy really trying to work at saving the average Oshkosh taxpayer any money in this budget.
Paul, however has never really been on the side of this little guy. He voted to put more borrowing in the budget by increasing the streets we are paving and only seems to want to balance budgets by cutting people's pay.
Paul never has real ideas for making government work better.
I have supported Paul in the past, but after the pool and budget fiasco's, I don't think I can anymore.
Check out the Eye On Oshkosh site for more about Paul and the garbage tax. It sure sounds like he's upset with some people.
Esslinger will tell you that the recently voted on fee is a more fair way of doing business for garbage collection. He goes into great detail about it at the Eye on Oshkosh site. I don't necessarily agree with his thinking but that's his story anyway and he's sticking to it.
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