Off the Record: Familiar with the bait and switch
Years ago, when I was living in my first apartment in Albert Lea, my landlord walked into the newspaper office where I was working and asked me, “What would you say if I said I had to raise your rent $50 a month?”
My eyes bugged out and my jaw dropped. I’m sure it looked comical.
Then he said, “Well, I’m only going to raise it $20 a month.”
A great feeling of relief flooded over me. My editor, Jim Oliver, sitting at the desk across from me, started to laugh.
“I think you were set up,” he chuckled.
And I had been. If my landlord had opened with the $20 a month raise, I would have snarled and grumbled, bitter resentment rising in my belly. As it was, I almost thanked him for raising the rent only $20.
And that may be what the New Ulm City Council did with city taxpayers this year, authorizing a proposed 20 percent maximum increase property taxes for next year earlier this fall.
When outraged citizens showed up at the Truth in Taxation hearing at city hall Tuesday night, the council said, “No, no, that’s not what we’re really going to levy. That’s only how much we’d levy if we raised taxes to pay for a new industrial park. We can pay for that without raising taxes, so the tax increase is only 4.6 percent.”
Perhaps they thought the taxpayers would be so relieved they would parade the councilors around the room on their shoulders, but that didn’t happen. Instead, some of the outraged citizens accused them of “bait and switch” tactics, setting the proposed property tax increase at a ridiculously high level they never intended to levy. Some councilors admitted it was a mistake they would not repeat in the future.
But this is the purpose of the Truth in Taxation process in Minnesota. People should have a chance to see what their elected officials are planning to do with their money, and how much they are expecting to levy, before the levy is finalized. They should have a chance to comment and complain while there is still time to do something about it.
I suppose the city council may have been trying to boost attendance at the Truth in Taxation meeting this year by proposing a huge increase. We’ve seen similar meetings in past years, where the council is proposing a hold-the-line kind of budget, where no one shows to to talk about the tax levy. At least now the council knows the people are paying attention out there.
As it is, 4.6 percent is still a pretty hefty increase, and councilors said they would try to lower that before. It’s worth reminding the council that nobody likes tax increases.
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And, one final word about sculpture in New Ulm. Last Saturday I ran into Penny Purtzer who reminded me of the art work that Helene Fesenmaier had created for the New Ulm Public Library. In 1976, after the Library invited submissions for an artwork for the building’s lobby, Fesenmaier, who had already established herself as an artist in London, won the competition with “Playback,” a kinetic sculpture consisting of three tall, angled columns topped with geometric shapes, mounted on motorized platforms that would make them slowly rotate. The sculpture was constantly changing as the columns rotated. The sculpture stood in the library for many years, until it fell out of favor, or needed too much maintenance, or something. It was taking down and is, I think, stored in a city garage somewhere.
Helene Fesenmaier was a leading, internationally known artist, highly regarded in Europe for her abstract works that combined painting and sculpture in unique and novel ways. She lived in London before her death at the age of 75 in 2013.
Purtzer believes, and I have to agree, that it is a travesty that a work by an internationally known artist from New Ulm is moldering in storage somewhere.
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