It seems to me there are many people out there who's sole function in life is to dream up new ways to extract money from property owners.
I pay for schools I have no kids in; not only that but the schools are back at the trough continually for more money.
Soon I will be paying for an airport I never use. The biggest local bidness also had a crosswind runway added which results in a flight path over my house that wasn't there before. This airport has been in operation since the '30s and a few years ago they feel the need for a crosswind runway? I wonder how many flights had to divert due to the lack of said runway over the years... I'd wager .000001%. Actually I've already been paying for airline service to this airport I never use thanks to a federal program called Essential Air Service. They subsidize every seat to the tune of hundreds of dollars, every flight, every day. And the vast majority of flying customers out of this airport are for local bidness- most who are on non-bidness flights go to other airports because in spite of the huge subsidy the flights here cost more.
Soon I will be paying for a drainage ditch project that will have no effect on the water table on my property. However, the farmland way upstream will see a nice benefit.
A local activist group of sorts wants to build a community pool. No doubt I will have to pay for that too.
The street just got resurfaced- not that it needed it. But who cares when free money pays for it all.
In our State there has been a shift away from state aid for this and that which means the funding for local stuff isn't as subsidized which means no, the locals aren't gonna cut anything; they're gonna jack up the property taxes and that happens whether the value of one's real estate is in the crapper or not.
Many other taxes are relatively easy to opt out of: don't like restaurant taxes- don't eat out. Don't like fuel taxes- don't buy fuel, and so on. When one has decided to not be a renter anymore you become a big fat sitting duck for all manner of scoundrels who seek to get a chunk of your change.
One doesn't have a whole lot of say in these things. Oh yes, I go to the meetings, in fact there is another one tonight, but this saying has been proven true time and time again: Meetings are not where decisions are made; meetings are where decisions are announced.