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Place the frog in a pot of cold water. Slowly increase the heat under the pot. By the time the frog realizes the water is beginning to boil, it is too late for the frog to jump out because their legs are stuck to the bottom of the pot.
The following are the City of Helena and Lewis & Clark County fiscal highlights from 2013 through 2022:
According to an April 3, 2024 article in The Missoula Current, Dan Bucks, a nationally recognized taxation expert and former Montana Department of Revenue Director explained the following in his recent address to the Missoula City Council, “Taxes have been shifted unfairly to residential property, and they’ve been shifted away from the other properties….Homeowners and renters are paying taxes that they shouldn’t be asked to pay – taxes that belong instead to various corporate and business classes of properties.”
Mr. Bucks went on to say that ‘In the last year, residential property taxes jumped nearly $270 million in Montana while commercial property taxes rose $37million. In comparison, corporate and mining taxes fell by $72 million while taxes on agriculture and forest land fell by nearly $4 million.’
“What this means is that residential property not only ended up paying a bigger share of state and local property taxes, but on top of that, they also paid for the $72 million in tax cuts enjoyed by other classes of property. It’s a double effect in the tax shift,” Bucks said.
Our state property tax system needs to be equalized and that will not occur unless and until we stand up and make ourselves heard by our state legislators and the governor’s office.
At the same time, it is also incumbent upon each one of us to stop approving any further bonds, levies, and other property tax increases.
We must set aside valuable time to make it clear to our city and county elected officials that enough is enough and that they will need to do what all of us have been doing for several years now – tighten their belts and find ways to work with existing revenue streams. If they recognize that they cannot afford to fund some new municipal project, then that means that project will have to be shelved until a later date.
We must interact with our local elected officials when we see them in public to share our fiscal concerns and fears of any new tax, fee, assessment, or other forms of ‘revenue generation’ at the great expense and financial hardship of their constituents.
We must begin regularly attending their commission meetings and offer public comment imploring them to stop presenting us with more ‘opportunities’ to pay higher taxes – no matter how ‘good’ they claim their reasons may be.
We need to become immune to their fearmongering that we are going to suddenly begin experiencing ‘public safety’ failures if we do not agree to pay them yet more in property taxes than many of us are paying monthly on our actual mortgage payments.
It is important that we focus on ensuring that our local elected officials clearly understand that we are no longer going to stand idly by while they gradually bring the cool waters surrounding us to a rapid boil that sooner rather than later will destroy our way of life in Helena and Lewis & Clark County.
Every night, hardworking lower- and middle-income families throughout Helena and Lewis & Clark County are faced with a decision – do we provide a hot meal for the kids tonight or do we put more gas in the truck to get back and forth to work tomorrow?
The time for us to stand up and say “enough” is now. Please reach out to our city and county elected officials today and let them know you are beyond sick and tired of being sick and tired about our excessive property taxes, fees, assessments, and bonds.
