| OCR Text |
Show Utah taxes, debt inflation give gloomy outlook, says association We have received our 1965 property tax bills. We will dig deep to pay the $122,704,000 charged. This is $7,979,000 or 7 above the 1964 figure and is $35,741,000 or 41 above the 1960 total. This is a whopper of an increase. What is going on in Utah to cause this jump in our property tax load, inquires in-quires the Utah Taxpayers Association, As-sociation, which makes other oth-er observations as follows: "Schools, local and state, nicked us for $79,800,000 or 65 percent of the total. This is $3,865,000 more than the 1964 total and is $22,006,000 or 22 percent above the 1960 total. "In addition to schools, counties, coun-ties, cities and towns, there are special districts imposing property taxes which amount to $4,500,000. In certain areas, it is difficult diffi-cult indeed to set forth exact levies, due to overlapping taxing tax-ing units. "Cities and towns (213 of them) tax us to the extent of $16,400,000 or 13.4 percent of the total property tax load. "Taxes for county purpose have skyrocketed to $21,879,000 or 17.8 per cent of the total. This is an increase of $12,578, 595 or 135 since 1960 just six years. "For the first time in a generation gen-eration the State has author ized General Obligation Bonds and this to the tune of $67, 000,000 to accellerate the building program. And this is not all as of January 1964, school districts had debt outstanding out-standing totaling $90,862,000. County bonded debt was $8, 599,000, cities and towns $53,-234,000 $53,-234,000 and special district total to-tal debt was $48,684,000. This totals $268,379,000. This will have to be paid for by future taxes. "And even all this money is not enough to satisfy our State and local spenders. The Federal Government is pouring more grants-in-aid funds into Utah. Money from this source amounted to $71,600,000 in 1963, up from $58,400,000 in 1960, a jump of 23 in just four years much more since. "And then there is the current cur-rent hidden tax of all inflation. infla-tion. This has eroded consumer purchasing power 1.9 just this last year and 12 since 1957. Inflation affects everyone, every-one, but most of all those least able to protect themselves the old, the widows, the retired and the poverty stricken. Inflation In-flation is tied in with uncontrolled uncon-trolled government spending and public debt. "Everything we get from government including non- essentials and costly bureau- cratic over-head, inefficiency, duplications and waste we pay for in taxes 'nothing is free. The sooner we learn this the better. "We pay the bill and if we tolerate waste and duplication and the squandering of our money for non-essentials we are certainly not very wise. The time has now come when we must unite and see that the burden is not increased but rather reduced and substantially. substan-tially. This applies to every level of government." |
