Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I pay taxes to the gubment, the gubment fixes my street (maybe)

I'm just finishing up my taxes. I have to pay this year. The payment would be a lot bigger if it wasn't for the Making Work Pay deduction. I'm thankful for that. And I'm glad I used a pencil to fill out my forms the old-fashioned way.

Now if they (the Big Gubment "THEY") could only fill the potholes on my street.

Find out more about Wyomingites and taxes at http://www.ctj.org/obamastaxcuts/wy.pdf

2 comments:

RobertP said...

Mike,

I am happy to report that the city of Independence, MO. has an excellent streets program. Some years ago, they passed a streets tax with the promise to do a periodic overlay of all streets. The kicker is that they quantified this and then put in a mechanism to track it and report on it. They have actually exceeded what they promised. My street has been done twice in less than 10 years and is in perfect shape. Hard to find a pothole in Independence.

Now, Lawrence, KS where Tyler lives, is a bit like a war zone. Tyler is puzzled as to why the liberals in charge of Lawrence can't keep the streets fixed. So hearing that Cheyenne has the same problem at least tells me that it is not a liberal/conservative issue.

The idea of quantifying what you promise and tracking it makes a lot of sense.

By the way, I appreciated the special deduction I got for the sales tax on the new car I bought last year.

Bob

Michael Shay said...

Bob: That sounds like a simple way to fix and track the problems in fixing streets. As far as I know, we have no "streets tax." We have sixth-penny referendums attached to sales taxes but the projects are usually specified -- rec center, library, sewer systems, etc. Since I'm too young to start compaining about the government full-time, I'll just say that it's not too much to ask the city to keep the streets paved and fixed.