Guest Post: Mandan City Government Offers Taxpayers A False Choice

Tweet

Written By:
Wayne Papke

Oct 27, 2012
7:19am

Have you ever been frustrated when you sense there are real problems in local government entities but you can never get to the source of the problem due to the government process? Have you ever wondered why you keep hearing from politicians that they gave you all this wonderful property tax relief with legislative bills titled “Property Tax Relief” year after year, yet your bill keeps increasing at a 7 – 15% rate?

You ask, where is the relief?

Well now and then local government does something that truly exposes the mentality they were taught from League of Cities/Counties, the development associations, the Chamber of Commerce and others. In fact, in Mandan, they pay $85,000 a year for a full time person on staff whose job is to creatively obtain your other tax money. It’s called the Business Development Office, headed by Ellen Huber. So you, the taxpayer pay twice. You pay your taxes, then you pay your property taxes of which in part hires this person whose job is to find a way to get at your other tax payments.

That’s like hiring a consultant whose job it is to create a blueprint plan to burglarize the Metropolitan Museum. How is the consultant’s job considered legal in the eyes of local government policing where in real life it is not?

Well, in this month’s Mandan Messenger, which can be viewed online or it comes with our water bills, the city and Ellen Huber truly made a major slip up and they exposed their true mentality. Here is this month’s polling question, verbatim, published this month.

“Between lower property taxes & increasing police protection, which would you choose”

Obviously, with our high growth rate, police departments are strained for needed added staffing so obviously, she is looking for a way to convey an excuse down the road on why our property taxes per parcel aren’t going down as they should be with the growth. More so, who among you and I would ever make police protection your first choice on cutting costs in local government budgets as obviously that is what she is saying will happen? So it is clear folks, we have hit a new low. Ellen Huber and the Mandan City commission will not support added police protection as we grow and as their revenues grow if we choose lower property taxes as our answer.

I’m sure we will continue to give tax incentives to Walmarts and anyone else that asks and the city will never consider those actions as a “loss of revenue” (which it clearly is when they are coming anyway). I’m sure we will continue to see other economic development budgets and all other non essential service budgets go up proportionately with the growth – but certainly not the police budget – because they made Mandan residents choose.

So if you plan to move to Mandan, just know, we are 25% higher in property taxes on equal valuations than Bismarck and you get the added benefit of declining per person police protection. Our slogan in Mandan is Made In Mandan. This is true because this month’s embarrassing polling question could only have been “Made in Mandan.”