Tax abatements, inventory tax, public school funding. Anyone here know...

Need help with research – tax abatements, inventory tax etc. & public school funding

At the last election the voters in my community passed (barely) a school tax levy that will significantly increase property taxes. While I wholeheartedly support the public schools, I feel resentful that citizens at the local level seem to be shouldering the revenue burden so that Bush can loot the public treasury for the benefit of his criminal cronies. In my community, which is Bush Country to the bone, the citizens are incapable of connecting the dots in this respect, or if they did, they would somehow find a way to blame Clinton.

The 2 major reasons given for needing a levy at this time were:

The state cut the amount of money each school gets per student.
Well, I guess we know the reason for that. The states are virtually broke. Thanks, Mr. Bush for taking all of our treasure for your endless, useless wars. What was that about “No Child Left Behind?” Comments?

The state is cutting the amount of taxes paid by businesses via the inventory tax.

Questions: What is the inventory tax? What percentage normally goes to schools? Why would the state be cutting these taxes on businesses at a time when communities are struggling to maintain their schools? Comments please?

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Not related to the levy issue, but:

Tax abatements

Thirty years ago this was a rural community. There were areas set aside as “enterprise zones” where businesses were encouraged to locate by offering tax abatements for a period of time (I think 7 years or so). Today, we have a major mall, numerous mini-malls, and traffic gridlock on all primary and most secondary roads during rush hour M-F. It would seem that business no longer need to be encouraged with tax abatements.

I would like to find out if any businesses are still receiving tax abatements. Is there an efficient way of doing that? I would like to research this without having to ask a lot of people, if you know what I mean. I could probably go online (auditors ofc.) but most businesses, being in malls, would have the same address. I could also go to the courthouse, but I don’t know where to start. You can tell that I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’ve googled info on tax abatements but haven’t come up with much.

Help? Comments? Should businesses be getting tax abatements when property owners, many of whom are unemployed, are struggling to make ends meet?

Thanks for any input/discussion people here are able to give. Please excuse my ignorance in this area. I'm not an economist.

you are asking good questions, many of those would be addressed after a few sessions of a typical pro-growth council meeting. I go all the time and they aren't as boring as I thought they might be. Note: many communities now have the meetigns on Cable Access.

These would be County Commissioners meetings in my case?

questions about tax abatement if you ask directly, they'll know you're looking for something specific. You may want to try this approach:

Go to a couple of meetings, get to know who's who at the meetings. They'll probably have a financial report and if they don't give it out specifically, you can nicely ask for it after the meeting.

If you let them you're trying to learn about the county, how it works, and how the different types of funding support county services, they'll be likely to answer your questions. If they don't want to answer them and they stall about things, just keep coming back to them with specific questions and "when do you think I could have that information?'"

Be nice, be curious, be interested, and perhaps act a little naive. Honey gets more flies than vinegar. And, even if they're hiding things, they have no excuse for shutting you off if you're nice.

Sigh, our county is always trying to hide things and they're very good at it. I just keep persisting and though it's not easy to get information from them, at least they don't openly obstruct me like they do some other people.

In lots of counties the commissioners have been in power for years and it's a very lucrative job for them. They often buy real estate and then control the rezoning of it to make it worth lots more before they resell it. Also, they can influence getting the county to pay for improvements, like roads, water and sewer. That's why county commissioners usually end up very well off, even if they started poor.

"In lots of counties the commissioners have been in power for years and it's a very lucrative job for them. They often buy real estate and then control the rezoning of it to make it worth lots more before they resell it."

We once had a county commissioner who was also a real estate developer. How interesting. For years I kept asking various people if that was illegal. Apparently it wasn't, but it should have been, IMO.

Someone who's a real estate developer would be bound to know, thru their commissioner ties, where the most lucrative future land deals are likely to be. I just think this is outrageous.

have fun!

Anyone have any idea what the "supposed" reason would be for businesses to be paying a LOWER inventory tax? I'm talking about the reason given for public consumption.