In the city of Taylor, the owner of a $150,000 home will pay $450 this year in property taxes simply to fund the pensions of police and firefighters who are eligible for retirement in their mid-40s, after only 20 years of service.
That’s the same millage rate residents are paying to fund the public schools for 10,000 children, according to State Rep. Doug Geise, a Democrat who calls for an overhaul of Public Act 312, which requires binding arbitration, can give police and firefighters strong negotiating leverage, and, which Geiss blames for the outsized public safety pensions in his community and elsewhere in Michigan.
“It’s unsustainable,” Geiss says.
In Dewitt, just north of Lansing the city police commonly share donuts with the township police at the local Tim Horton’s. And they could share considerable savings if they were all part of one police department, according to former Dewitt mayor and current State Rep. Paul Opshommer, a Republican who calls for overhauling arcane state laws that prevent neighboring governments from combining services or consolidating the operations.
“This is about saving our local communities – it’s that simple,” Opsommer says.
Geiss and Opsommer are part of a small tribe of bipartisan legislators who are working with the Michigan Municipal League to draft important changes that can, in the long run, result in more cost-efficient services and preservation of quality of life in these cash-strapped times.
Click here for a quick info guide on the changes they propose.
Click here to get information on how you can make your voice heard on these issues.
6 Comments
Reforming Public Act 312 might be better handled at a state constitutional convention. ANOTHER reason to vote Yes For Michigan on Proposal One in November, 2010.
Changes to the Urban Cooperation Act and others to improve the sharing of local services is badly needed and I applaud efforts to fix this. But it is a minor fix to a major problem.
The real problem is we have way too many local units of government taxing their communities to provide duplicative and inefficient services. We can make these services so much more efficient and improve our tax structure by bringing our local governmental organization up to date with this century. We no longer need units designed when a 12 mile round trip on a horse to file a deed took a big chunk of the day. Townships are an anachronism of the Northwest Ordinance and don’t even exist west of the Mississippi River.
We should abolish all non-charter townships and turn their authorities over to counties. We should also drastically reduce the number of school districts and ISD’s to a manageable size. As you keep editorializing, Mr. Bebow, the picture is way too big for all this small vision tinkering.
John, I believe you still have a copy of my Metropolitan Rebate proposal to creat a state incentive for local governemnts’ consolidating a host of services. In Metro Grand Rapids, we could free up over $75 million per year. Perhaps we should dust it off.
John H. Logie, Mayor of Grand Rapids 1991-2003
Mayor Logie – I’ll still call you Mayor as you were such a highly regarded public servant for such a long time, have you any information on the cost savings that could be realized by reducing the number and type of governmental units? I’ve been proposing this for some time but thus far, have been unable to find any specific information on these specific costs so I could factually argue my assumptions. It is hard to move this issue forward without being able to show concrete savings.
This year the wife and I will put 8 % of our income into property taxes, while we will only pay 4.6 % into the State income tax.
Yes, our property taxes are more than 4000 per year while we are living off of our retirement checks.
Property taxes are the most discriminating taxes that ever hit our state, and no one seems to want to fix it, by shifting everyone that lives in a comunity to a income tax, therefore all will be paying their share.
How to save money and provide a better service to the residents.
In our last budget meeting I proposed that the board OK the proposal of the treasure. She proposed that we have daily updates for the tax payments. The difference cost from quarterly updates at $2.000 and daily updates was $1.000 more for a total of $3,000 per year. What she proposed could result in a cost savings in mailing receipts for the tax payments unless the residents requested one.Our board chose not to provide the extra $1,000 for the service. I have asked on several occasions for us to move into the 21 century but the board chooses to live in the past by not using the technology available to us to reduce costs and improving services to the residents.
Dale Westrick trustee Watertown Township