Tuesday evening, I had the pleasure of attending a short notice meeting with members of KUBA at the beautiful storefront at Backstage Productions (BSP).The meeting was orchestrated by Dominic Vanacore and Tom Jacobe. With little notice, about 20 people attended the meeting, including council members Hoffay and Whitlock.
The audience included commercial property owners as well as homestead owners, which broadened the points of view on the tax burden transfer issue; the subject of the meeting.I have to say, those of us working inside the political bubble make a lot of assumptions when it comes to the greater public’s understanding of issues that directly affect them. Information dispersal failures and public apathy on these matters create a huge gap between those who understand and those who don’t. Shame on us!
The three of us did a fair presentation on the tax transfer up to a point. Then I had to go into a detailed lecture on how we got to this stage, what the possible answers are and who is responsible for the misleading tax letters and where the misinformation is coming from. It was exhausting.
Abel Garraghan, Brian Cafferty and a host of other voices had good points on this dilemma, which didn’t end here. Tom, Shirley and I assured that the Council had plenty of work ahead to provide a compromise on the overbearing tax burden on commercial taxes, and we mean it.Jesse Smith of the Kingston Times will have more details.
2 comments:
Mike
What did you do to our buddy Tom in that picture? Looks like he's morphing into a Carvelle clone...smitty
Mike: great to hear that the Council will commence work on same. The sad aspect is that the Council decision to support or not support the Mayor's recommendation will occur a few days after the Grieving Process. Abel's comments along with others from the Business community have to be accepted otherwise their will be no additional business growth in the city. Abel's graphs and statements reflect a sad commentary on the cities progress towards disaster. I am not being harsh on the Council, but someone has to help "bite the proverbial bullet" and begin to accept responsibility towards keeping and growing business in the city. Chamber Member Gene Gruner as Chair of the UC Chamber's Legislative Committee prepapred and sent a letter to the Freeman, which I read last night on City & County.
Again- thanks for all your efforts to keep the city moving. I hope that you are able to persuade and or convince the other members of the Council to vote Yes on the Mayors letter to reform taxes as per his proposal.
Shelly Z
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