10/04/04  Comments on Faux-Hearing

A couple of notes here. The first quote from DallasArena.com's article, Faux-Hearing is this:

"Killingsworth: Mayor, Miller. I would like to make one correction that the council member mentioned, only because the council member asked me to. These properties are not tax-exempt. They do pay property taxes, but it's not based upon an assessed value, it's based upon the operating net income. It's different, so they pay a lot less than on an assessed value, but they do pay property taxes. They are not exempt."

Not tax exempt? Perhaps not exempt from taxes, but that sure sounds like they're exempt from typical property taxes. What would it take to make all revenue generating property to be taxed in a fashion similar to this proposed apartment complex? Why is it ok for them to receive favorable tax preferences while it is not ok for others? Especially when the quote below is taken into consideration...

"People of Dallas deserve better than to have a huge geographic area of our city off the tax rolls and blighted and generating crime and draining our police and firefighter resources. You cannot have lived in this city for even 15 years without seeing example after example of what happens to stable and habitable areas when multi-family comes in."

And in this portion you neglected to mention the additional impact these kinds of developments eventually have on the school district. So, this is not only a multi-family development, but also a multi-pronged problem. After the reduced tax revenue is taken into account, the increased load on the police and firefighters from increased crime and associated activities, and the increased load the school district must carry to "educate" all the kids that will eventually live here since eventually all apartment complexes seem to be overcrowded, then the rest of us middle-class homeowners, who all too often sit back and take it as long as the lights stay on and the trash continues to be picked up, will have quite a tab to pick up via increases in our non-exempt taxes based on assessed value instead of the more favorable formula for calculating taxes based on revenue generated.

Which brings up another question, how is the revenue generated calculated? "Operating net income" What does that mean? In none of my economics classes did I ever hear a phrase like that. It sounds like some sort of accounting trickery that will allow this proposed complex to get away with paying, most likely, no taxes at all since early on in the life span of any rental real-estate operation like this expenses are high, especially when you take into account claimed depreciation, bona-fide operating expenses, professional services, and other tax deductible expenses, be they real or an accounting and tax tool.

So when is Mr. Gwen going to be put on the case? This sounds like something that should be right up his alley. Public mis-conduct, un-ethical behavior, illegal conflicts of interest, etc. This kind of behavior does more, over the long run, to undermine a city, state, or country than any other. This city council should be in some under-developed country where corruption and bribe taking is rampant. We don't need them here.