Friday, August 18, 2006

Taxation without Representation


According to the Wilmette Life in a side column on the first news page (print edition, no online story that I can find), the $12,000 per single-family home teardown tax is coming up for a vote this next Tuesday, 7:30 pm at the Village Board meeting, Village Hall, 1200 Wilmette Ave.

The village website has not yet posted the next village board agenda as of this writing, and still shows the vote as probably taking place Sept. 12th. Perhaps the board wants to get this vote out of the way before school starts on Wednesday.

Or perhaps they just want a lot of us residents out of touch, out of town when they vote.

Here is contact information.

UPDATE: From my friend Tom, email response to post:
What's most pernicious about a teardown tax is the % of the "real return" that this confiscates. Let's look at an elderly widow who bot her house for $100K in the '60's. She now sells it for $400K to a developer. Looks like a $300K "windfall". But, given the 40 yrs and some rampant inflation in there, this woman may have little "real return" or it may even be negative. $100K in 1960's dollars could easily be more than $400K in 2006 dollars; thus, she is not "cashing out" to the tune of $300K and thus taking "only $12K" is no big deal. She has likely at best just kept pace with inflation and the $12K is coming right out of her pocket!

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