David Tuthill

The Dallas Morning News has two news items of note this week.

First is Monday's front page story by Kevin Krause, 'Fast track to foreclosure' : For some, property tax loans come with an unforeseen price (DallasNews.com, 2/11/8) about a couple who lost their home in Fair Park due to their in ability to pay their property taxes. Their mortgage was paid off, but retired couple was unable to pay their property taxes on the house where they lived in for more than 20 years. The article tells of others who are in a similar position. An unscrupulous lender made them a loan for their property taxes, and their inability to pay that loan exacerbated their problem.

When I attended UNT (NTSU back then), my economics professor stated, if you had 10? cents and bread costs 12?, then you could not afford to buy bread for your table. That basic truth is lost on our local governments who seem determined to tax as many families as possible out of their homes. Retiring representative Fred Hill (with his local government buddies who presented him with many awards for his efforts to enable them in their spending and block a public-supported appraisal valuation cap of 5% percent) must e dancing with joy at their never-ending, unbridled spending at taxpayers' expense (those who can afford the inflated tax bills, as well as those who can?t). After all, they as responsible for our inflated tax appraisals as is the Appraisal District.

The second story was in Saturday?s business section, Crow Holdings chief protests city's plan for convention hotel (By Suzanne Marta and Dave Levinthall, DallasNews.com,2/16/8):

Mr. Crow wrote in a letter dated Thursday that the plan for a city-financed 1,000-room convention center hotel would be "the height of folly" because the market isn't strong enough to support the additional rooms.

Harlan Crow, chairman and chief executive officer of the Hilton Anatole, sent a letter to mayor Tom Leppert about the city council possibly spending $500 million of taxpayers' money on convention center hotel for Downtown Dallas.

Mr. Crow questions the city even being in the hotel business at all (competing with privately-owned hotels). He feels the hotel market is not strong enough for this additional capacity. He stated one major reason that a hotel has not been built near the convention center is ?this is not an area that people want to stay?. He predicted ?The city is going to lose their shirt on this deal?.

Well, it is not the city council?s money or city staff?s money that will be lost. It's TAXPAYER MONEY. What better use of tax dollars than to SQUANDER it on a hotel. Mayor Leppert stated in his campaign literature that City Hall was an ATM (automated tax machine)!

Should we be surprised at this? I am not.

There's a story where a fisherman abandons his nets and the river to climb a tree to catch fish.

Our local governments cannot control themselves in their spending nor prioritize their projects from needed to fluff projects. How are they with their own personal spending? It would be of interest to require all elected officials to publicize their credit score before they are elected. That way we can determine if they are fit to spend the tax dollars that are entrusted to them. It is apparent they can?t and do not deserve to make these types of decisions.

David W. Tuthill