Oops, meant to post that one under my own name...not the administrative List
Manager designation.
David Brauer
King Field - Ward 10
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of List Manager
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 1:17 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Ventura tax reform & Mpls. schools
Doug Grow had an informative column Sunday on Ventura's tax reform plan.
Now as we all, ahem, know, purely state matters are not germane to
Minneapolis-Issues. But Grow included a particularly Minneapolis aspect in
his piece (which is at:
http://www.startribune.com/viewers/qview/cgi/qview.cgi?story=83286723&templa
te=column_grow_a), or go to columnists on the Strib's Metro-page site.
Anyway, Grow wrote:
"And, in perhaps his scariest 'reform' proposal, Ventura said that owners of
businesses, farmland and vacation homes should not have to pay for excess
school levies. That burden would fall totally on homeowners. Think of how a
proposal such as that could gut excess-levy programs such as the one
overwhelmingly passed by Minneapolis voters to maintain small class sizes.
More than half of the $40 million levy comes from business and commercial
property."
As I recall, when we debated the referendum on the list last year, there was
a subsection about state property-tax reform and how it pushed a greater
share of the levy onto homeowners. If Grow is right, Ventura would lift the
burden entirely -- presumably in exchange for the state picking up more
education costs and reducing our property taxes. A levy cap sounds mighty
dangerous to a city with most of the state's social problems, that has
nevertheless been willing to surtax itself.
>From the Minneapolis resident's perspective, levy-caps sound like the fatal
flaw in Ventura's plan. Can list members on the school board, city
government, or even on the state/governor side weigh in with their
perspective? (And of course, the rest of us...)
David Brauer
Kingfield - Ward 10
