[Winona Online Democracy] I agree with Wendy and Bill. It seems insane to beat ourselves up over school funding and local services debates when people believe the services are essential and the money is "out there" but not accessible due to an arcane tax system. Even though I disagree with Ventura on many things, I strongly support the idea of reforming the property tax system. Does anyone else know if the idea is dead or stalled? Wasn't Senator Kierlin looking into the same sort of proposal? What can we as local citizens do to help this project along? Dwayne --------------- >Your historical perspective on local units losing their piece of the sales >tax is very interesting. I heard that Ventura wanted to hold off on any >more sales tax rebates this year in order to reform the property tax >system next year. I was behind that idea, but it didn't go any where. I >hope in the near future there will be the ability and political will to >overhaul it. I agree we are forced to rely on the property tax too much >for local/school projects, and it's unfair to people like my elderly >neighbors. Although I like having a small bit of the sales tax available >for local use, the sales tax also is a bit regressive and unfair. Using >income tax for local spending, a small percentage anyway, is the way to >move. > >Wendy Draves > ><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> ><HTML> ><HEAD> > ><META content=text/html;charset=iso-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type> ><META content='"MSHTML 4.72.3713.2800"' name=GENERATOR> ></HEAD> ><BODY bgColor=#ffffff> ><DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Your historical perspective on local units >losing their piece of the sales tax is very interesting. I heard that >Ventura wanted to hold off on any more sales tax rebates this year in order to >reform the property tax system next year. I was behind that idea, but it >didn't go any where. I hope in the near future there will be the ability >and political will to overhaul it. I agree we are forced to rely on the >property tax too much for local/school projects, and it's unfair to people >like >my elderly neighbors. Although I like having a small bit of the >sales tax >available for local use, the sales tax also is a bit regressive and >unfair. Using income tax for local spending, a small percentage >anyway, is >the way to move.</FONT></DIV> ><DIV> </DIV> ><DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Wendy Draves</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML> ********************************************************** Dwayne and Denine Voegeli Social Studies and Science Teachers Winona Senior High School 901 W. Gilmore Ave. Winona, MN 55987 USA Home Voice Mail: (507) 453-9012 School telephone number: (507) 454-9509 E-mail address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Personal Web Page: http://www.jarviscomputer.com/voegeli High School Web Site: http://wshs.luminet.net/ A Web Site About the City of Winona: http://winonanet.com/home.html "Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself." -- John Dewey *********************************************************** ---------------- This message was posted to the Winona Online Democracy Project. Please visit http://onlinedemocracy.winona.org to subscribe or unsubscribe. Please sign all messages posted to this list with your actual name. Posting of commercial solicitations is not allowed on this list. Report problems to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
