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Saturday, August 18, 2007

Property Taxes, Balloon Fest and More...

Updated 8-19-07 at 11 am

From today's Standard we read about our local State Rep. Gage's plan for a property tax rebate. Our readers already knew of his efforts as we were first to break the story yesterday. We appreciate his efforts and are cautiously optimistic that this will be at least a good place to start for tax reform.

Also, Huntsville resident D-Bell continues to research tax inequities and has suggested a class action lawsuit against the County Commissioners and Assessors. After the Wednesday meeting, there was some wrangling of local attorney's who also had the same suggestion. Would you be willing to pitch in for the fight? 100 residents X $100 would go a long way towards a legal fight.

As an aside, here is some information about California's Proposition 13. Huntsville's own Larry Zini also posted "Proposition 13 - Pros and Cons" recently.

And lastly, from the Standard we read about the weather hampering our infamous balloon fest. Sadly, the balloon fest seems to have become just another event to exploit our pristine valley in order to sell lodging and real estate. Wolf Creek's Nancy Seraphin states, “This is the biggest weekend of the summer for our rental and lodging properties,” she said. “The majority of our overnight visitors come in the winter to ski, so this is a nice boost.”

Enjoy your slow and scenic drive down the canyon today, and leave early.

UPDATE 8-18-07 @ 3:45 PM: Thanks to our friends at the Weber County Forum for their sympathy to our cause. We were their top story today. Rudi and Company happen to have the most read forum in Northern Utah.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree! Wolf Creek and Ski Lake seem to promote these events for their own benefit. The balloons are cool, but not worth the down side and exploitation. Does anyone remember SnowBasin's old Slogan? "Utah's Best Kept Secret." Shhhh!

Anonymous said...

District 8 Representative Froerer's proposal for a tax rebate is not a bad idea assuming
Greedier County goes for something like that. The problem is the dollar amount of the rebate is far too low...something like "a morning after pill" and a hangover after being ______ed by our elected Greedier County officials. They surely must not be counting on reelection after this.

Valley said...

From the Weber County Forum, 8-18-07, Danny does not have much sympathy for those of us in "Ogden's Hole."

danny said...
OK you people in Huntsville, and everywhere else, listen up.

If your taxes went up 100% or 800% then file a complaint about it. They mail out the complaint form with the tax notice!

If you can show by assessment or some other objective method that the county has overvalued your property, then the county will lower you valuation, and your tax. (They’ve done that with me before.) But if your property has really gone up that much, then suck it up, and pay up! (I’ve done that before too.)

Why should you Ogden Hole dwellers get a lower TAX RATE than me? And as far as Froerer and the other politicians kissing your butts, congratulations, now you know you are a bonafide SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP!

Try to get the message – we have all these candidates running for office who say they want to “bring people and business to the area,” and “grow the economy.” OK, have you heard of “supply and demand”? If the amount of real estate is essentially static (supply) and there are more PEOPLE (demand), then the PRICE must go UP! That’s why they call it the LAW of supply and demand!

For developers, contractors, newspaper publishers, bankers, brokers, and real estate people that means more MONEY IN THEIR POCKETS! Why do you think those people spend so much time with politicians?! But if you are somebody who just wants to live here, GROWTH only means that means YOU GET TO PAY MORE TAX, your water is less pure, and when you want to go somewhere you get stuck in traffic! Is this really so hard to understand??

If you’d stop electing these jerks who try to make this place GROW, who try to make this place GET NOTICED, you wouldn’t have this problem. But since you keep voting for GROWTH MONKEYS, then you get your WISH! Grab you wallet and pay, pay, pay baby.

Please forgive me for being strident, but I hate it when people SCREW THEMSELVES then look for somebody else to blame.

Anonymous said...

Same is true of taxes in Utah County. The majority votes for a light rail system. Duh - Utah County doesn't need light rail and now everyone's scratching their head as to why taxes launched again.

Utah County needs a heavy duty mass transit system if anything - not a kiddie ride to Salt Lake City but you'll pay more for all the stations for light rail than if we'd just purchased a nice mass commuter rail to SLC and back with no more than 5 stops instead of 20 or more.

Then there's TNT (Truth in Taxation) - proven to be worthless since it's only purpose is to temporarily hickup the tax rate changes. You don't see a document that comes out with your tax bill that outlines where their going to use the money and the fact is for the last 20 years they end up spending the money other than where they said they would and if there's a surplus it's called a year end bonus for the county assessor.

Kris Poulson is paid $100,000+/year. His appraisers sit around for 11 months and then spend one month looking at arial photographs of your house to figure out what you owe before the bills go out.

Doesn't that get your interest?

If you want to slow the growth - we need stop electing this dopes and get a Proposition 13 in Utah.

Valley said...

Thanks for visiting from Happy Valley. Check back often as we are circling our wagons for a march to Mr. Huntsman's mansion. We would love to have you join us.

Anonymous said...

I have to say as a long-time resident of Ogden Valley - I HOPE THE BALLOON FEST IS A FAILURE!! Wolf Creek does not care about its local neighbors and NEVER HAS! I use to attend it every year when it was at the Eden Park and we made a family event out of it! I attended once at Wolf Creek and WILL NEVER GO BACK! It is nothing but a ploy to sale real estate and artificially inflate our prices!!!

Valley said...

Most Valley residents we speak with do not attend either. While the balloons are beautiful, one has to question the advantages to Valley residents.