Here Comes the Tax Man!

Some people say a man is made out of mud. A poor man's made out of muscle and blood. Muscle and blood and skin and bone. A mind that's weak and a back that's strong. You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store. I was born one morning when the sun didn't shine. I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine. I loaded sixteen tons, a number nine coal and a straw ball said, Well, bless my soul, you load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store. It's a bird. It's a plane. Nope. It's the tax man. And the tax man is coming for you. Want to find out how? Come on. Let's get in the ring. I'm your host, Keith Marshall, and let's go one more round. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fear itself is what? We will make America great again. If I say something that you don't want to listen, don't listen. One more round. Welcome to one more round podcast. I'm your host, as always, Keith Marshall, and welcome to the ring. Today, we're going to be talking about taxes. You know, they say the only two things that are assured are death and taxes. Well, death and taxes are definitely assured. There's a few other things, but they're definitely going to happen to all of us. We're going to pay our taxes, and we're not going to live forever. But today, we're going to be talking about Radford City real estate taxes. And I've been doing a little research, and I've been following along with some statements from the past and some other things, and I think I've come up with a fairly interesting podcast today. You know, in Radford City Council meeting last night, and you can go and look at that online. That's going to be from 4 to 24. Just go to Radford City Government YouTube. Just Google that. You should be able to find that fairly easy. And last night, they proposed the new tax rate at 69 cents per $100 of assessed value for real estate taxes in the city. Now, they did some other things, but today, so we don't confuse other issues, we're going to stick to just the real estate taxes portion of what they did last night. Now, I will add that though it's looking like this rate's going to be 69 cents, it's not official yet. They'll actually have the first reading or the vote on that on April the 16th, and it looks like by their schedule, a second reading on that April the 22nd. So it still could change. It could go up, it could go down, but it seems to be there's a consensus at the five cent mark per $100. Now, as you recall, at the end of 2023, you got something just terrible and awful in the mail, and that was the new Radford City real estate assessment, which will begin to be taxed at that rate beginning in July of 2024. Now, if you're like me, your head hit the roof. You saw your assessment of your home, your residential home, go up by as much as 40, 50, 60, I'm even hearing above 70% in some cases, and you immediately were petrified when you saw it because you can do the math. If you just did the assessment at 84 cents per $100, it would be astronomical. But that's not how it works. There's some good news in that, but I'm going to explain that the good news is not near as good as it's been built. Now, what happens is, after there's a big assessment like that, and your town council or city council, in this case, come together to set the tax rate, they have to draw down the amount of revenue that they're bringing in from all of the taxes, that is, residential real estate and commercial real estate combined, to a figure that's equal to, or close to equal to, the revenue that they were bringing in before the tax assessment. So, for example, and I'm just using this figure. I don't know the exact figure, but we're going to use it as a reference. Let's say, in 2023, all the assessed value of all the property and revenue that they brought in totaled $1 billion, $1 billion with a B, $1 billion. Well, taxed at 84 cents per $100, that comes out to a figure of revenue that the city of Radford brought in off real estate taxes. And if we did all the $1 billion, and we divided it by 100, and we multiplied it by .84, that would come out to about $8,400,000 of revenue. Now, I don't know the exact figure. I'm just using that for example. But once they do the assessment, when they have a big assessment that comes in like that, they have to go back to a baseline of that $8,400,000. They have to go back to a baseline before they add any additional taxes or tax increases to that. Now, in order to do that, they have to come up with a new multiplier. Because, obviously, you've had all these reassessments, all these property values that went way up. So, they have to come up with a multiplier, in this case much less than 84 cents per $100, in order to level that out and bring in the exact same amount of revenue that they were in 2023. And the number that they come up with, and the number that they gave us, was 64 cents per $100. Quite a drop. That's a 20 cent drop below that 84 cents per $100. And when you use that 64 cents per $100, and you divide it with the total amount of all the new assessed values, commercial and business combined, that will spit out a revenue figure at or about the same amount that they were bringing in in 2023. And they've done that. They set it for 64 cents per $100. And I thought, okay, that doesn't sound too bad. I don't like paying 5 cents more in taxes. And by the way, we're going to get into this. Our current mayor, David Horton, made quite a campaign promise in 2018, where he promised that he would never raise taxes as much as 10 cents or 15 cents or 20 cents. We're already learning that he's already broken that promise. He's well over 10 cents. Just in the simple common math way of just adding up how many tax increases with the amount of cents that it's been, he's already broken that pledge. But we'll get to that a little later. So anyway, I thought, hey, it's not the worst thing in the world if they drop it back to level, and then I have to pay 5 cents more for $100. That's not quite as bad as I thought it probably was going to have to be in order to pay off this mess that the previous council has created. And by the way, I hope you guys enjoyed the podcast with Mayor Tom Starnes, our former mayor of 36 years. I've had a bunch of comments and a bunch of people that's really liked it and really appreciated Mayor Starnes and all he's done. And, you know, several of the comments, I had several people say this, that they weren't 100% happy with Mayor Starnes when he was mayor, but looking back now at the way things were and how bad things really have gotten now, they sure do miss Mayor Starnes, and I do too. What a great mayor he was. All right, getting back to it. So I was reasonably happy just thinking, hey, it's not going up too bad, 5 cents stinks, but that's not going to kill anybody. So I went, and I didn't have my assessment in front of me, but I had my mother's. My mother passed away, and I've been helping with, you know, as my sister settled her estate and do some other things. So I had her tax assessment from the great tax reassessment of 2024, 2023, and I was looking, and I just wanted to use that. And here's what I thought. I thought, okay, her previous tax assessment for her home was about $148,100 and taxed at that 84 cent per $100 rate. She was paying about $1,244.04 per year. So I thought, well, you know, if they've leveled that down, if they've brought it back down and they put it at 64 cents, I should be able to take her new assessed value, which, by the way, it jumped pretty good. It jumped to $212,600. I should be able to take that new value and multiply it by their new 64 cent that they had, and it should bring it back down to the same amount that she paid last year, and this is all before the new 5 cent tax. So I did that. But something strange happened when I did that. When I did that math and I multiplied her new assessed value by the 64 cents per $100, the 20 cent drop, she's actually paying more at the 64 cent rate. It jumped to $1,360, which was actually an increase, oh, an increase of $116.60. Now, this is before the tax increase, the 5 cent, ever showed up. So I thought, surely I must be making a mistake or it's just an anomaly. Well, I want you to know that I have now done the same thing on nine additional residential houses in the city of Radford, and you can do this yourself. What you need to do, get your tax assessment that come out. I believe it come out in December, if I'm not mistaken, and flip it over to the back and you will have, and it will say in bold writing, this is not a bill, but it will have your 2023 assessed value and your 2024 reassessed value, and you can do the equation on the 2023, and it should come out perfectly to the amount of money that you owe, and it's listed under the title city tax levy. So if you take the amount of money that it says your total was for your 2023 assessment, you divide that by 100, and then you multiply that number by .84, it should exactly match the city tax levy, and I know my mother's certainly did. So we did the exact same thing with nine other sites, nine other residential homes, and you know, we come up with the same kind of problem on every single one of them. None of them matched what they should match if everything was brought back to level. So my immediate thought was, oh, they're cheating us. They've actually built some sense in there before they ever had the tax vote, so it's going to be a lot more, and that's what I, you know, I kind of went from that premise and I did a little research, and I've been making some phone calls and really trying to figure out exactly what's going on. Have they really tricked us? So before I get into that, take a look at what your assessed was, what your assessed value was, and what it is for 2024, and see how much more at the .64 rate we're starting at you're paying now, how much more you're paying now coming up in 2024, even before the five cents tax increase that they voted on last night, how much more you're paying right now. So when I looked at my mom's, and like I said, I encourage you to do the same thing, I wanted to figure out, okay, I know that they're using the .64 figure, so what would it have to be? What would that rate, that percent multiplier have to be in order for it to reach the level amount of exactly what she paid last year? And truthfully, when I did the math, I just started plugging some numbers in there, and I started, you know, it started at .64, so I tried .60, I tried .59, I actually got down to .585, which is 58.5 cents per $100. 58.5 cents per $100. Well, if you just do the math, that's actually 5.5 cents less than what they set it at. So I'm like, wait a second, are you telling me before they ever show up to vote on the five cents, they've already slipped in a 5.5% tax increase, 5.5 cents per $100 tax increase for real estate taxes under the table. And, you know, I don't trust people with my money, I don't know about you, but I surely do not trust politicians and the government with my money. They will take it and they will waste it as we've watched happen over the last six years. So I went from it, went at it from that premise. Surely they've tried to steal, stole our money. But I found out I was wrong. I have learned something, and I want to pass that on to you. This is a learning show, hey, we're learning things here. I know I was a councilman for eight years, but a lot of this that just wasn't in the instruction manual, wasn't something that I had to get deep into, but I'm learning a lot. The podcast has probably taught me a lot more than I'm teaching you because I'm not a real good person to explain it. And I will tell you, I know this is difficult to explain, especially just over an audio recording. If I had a chalkboard or something like that and I was doing it on YouTube or something along those lines, it would be a lot easier, but I'm having to just try to explain it. So bear with me and get you a pen and a piece of paper and try to follow along and do this with your home the same way. So what did I find out? Well, there's an important point to how everything in the city is taxed when it comes to real estate. It doesn't matter whether you're a business, industrial, whatever you are, or residential home, you are taxed at the same exact rate per $100. So it doesn't matter if you're Cole Morgan or if you're John that lives on 2nd Street in a two-bedroom brick ranch. Right now, before this new tax rate, before the new assessment, you were paying .84 cents per $100 of assessed value. And again, simple way to figure that out, take your assessed value, divide it by 100, and multiply that by .84 or 84 cents, and you'll see what your tax bill is going to be for the year. So, they take all of those taxes and they put them all in one pot. Residential, business, commercial, whatever, they put all that in one pot. And when they have to bring this thing back down to level, they have to take into account all of those, business, residential, all together to bring it back to a level figure. So why, after doing that and setting it at .64, are we all that own homes that are resident owners? Why are we paying more? Well, I'll tell you why. The residential market in the city of Radford over the last five, six years has been booming. If you live in whatever neighborhood you live in, you have seen multiple sales of homes all around you over the last few years. It's kind of slowed down some now. With the interest rates climbing and the prices reaching their peak, it's slowed down now. But it was really hot, particularly a few years ago. When it's really hot and the prices are soaring and people are competing, the cost of homes go up. The number of comps out there on the market for the assessors to use to value those properties, those things are going up. And your value of your property has went up. And our assessments, as I said, come in 50, 60, 70 percent above the value from 2023. But not so on the business side. I've done a lot of research, and honestly, I can only do it by speaking to those that own businesses in the city, that own commercial property. I cannot look up what their 2024 assessment is now. That's not available. I could look up the 2023, but that doesn't do me any good. I'd have to know what their new assessment is. But from what I can gather from business property owners, they did not see a very large increase at all in their reassessment. Some close to 10 percent, but many not even 10 percent, some much less. So how does that affect us? Well, when the residential market booms and you have a huge reassessment, by the way, I don't care how many times you explain it to me, how many times you prove it to me, and you may be able to do it, I still believe the assessment was ridiculous. I still believe it was overblown and overdone. And it doesn't account for just basic reality in some cases. But nevertheless, it was done. And you were given a couple-week window to run in there and say something, and most of us, including I, did not do that. And so you're going to pay the tax man what he says you have to pay. Now, I want to make a fine point here. We do have a commissioner of revenue, and they simply support the functions that are dictated by state law. They do not, this person, our current commissioner of revenue, they don't set the tax rates. They don't determine what each property is worth. There's actually an outside firm that comes in and does that. She's just responsible for making sure it happens, it's done in a timely way, and the process flows along. So I don't want anybody to point any fingers. And most of this, I have to be honest, this is just the law. But we're going to find out as we get a little deeper into it that we are suffering as a result of some bad decisions in the past and a poor direction that the city's heading in. We're suffering from that. This is on the Rafford City webpage in regards to real property reassessments for 2024. I think you all should hear this because, you know, it's important and it kind of puts things in perspective. Here's what it says. Per state code section 58.1-3250, the city of Rafford is required to perform a general reassessment of real property every four years. The general reassessment of real property for Rafford City will be effective January 1, 2024. The purpose of the general reassessment is to establish the property's fair market value. The last general reassessment to establish fair market value was effective January 1, 2020. The reassessment process involves site visits by a team of assessors to each property throughout the city in order to view the property and verify information on the property data cards. These visits were conducted during 2023. Once the site visits are complete, the assessment firm, that's the firm I told you about, will perform an in-depth market analysis of the most current sales data to determine the new fair market value of all real estate. After the analysis is complete, a notice of the proposed 2024 valuations will be sent to all real estate property owners in mid to late November 2023. That's the big shocker that we got. I told you December, but I think it was late November. There will be an appeal process following receipt of the updated assessment to provide property owners an opportunity to challenge the valuation. That was a two-week window. We've already missed it, so there's no going back now. Rafford City is required to reassess all real property located in the city every four years per state code. As many of you are aware, and boy aren't we aware, the real estate market has increased significantly since the 2020 reassessment, resulting in much higher values. While this would lead most to expect real estate taxes to increase significantly as well, that may not be the case. The tax rate set by city council during the budget process is what drives revenue slash tax increases and ultimately determines what you pay, not the property value or change to fair market value via the reassessment process. The purpose of the reassessment is not to generate more revenue. It is to redistribute the tax burden based on the value of your property. The reassessment process is dictated by the Code of Virginia and tax implication is designed to be the most revenue neutral. And it goes on to list the actual Virginia state code. Well, the last little part of that about it is intended to redistribute the tax burden. Well, I have to say, if what I'm going to explain to you is true, and my research shows that it's true, I could be wrong because I do not have access to the tax tickets of all our businesses in the city. Only the ones that participate in my little question and answer, promising them I wouldn't mention their name because they don't want their taxes to go up. And I don't want them to go up either. I don't blame them. But what I have found out is that while the real estate values of residences, of homes in the city went through the roof, our businesses, our industrial properties stayed fairly stagnant. Went up a little bit, not very much. So, what happens in that pool of money? Remember I told you that all the money that's collected, either for business or residential, is added all up and put into one pool? Because of the increases, monstrous increases, in the real estate market, we have now outpassed the growth of the commercial market in values. And the tax burden, or the amount that we have to pay in order to meet that figure from last year, has flip-flopped and we have gained significant ground. It has been redistributed, but not fairly. We've added a couple sacks to our back of the tax burden because of the lack of growth within our commercial section of the city. You know, I've heard people say that they would love for Radford to be a bedroom community. What that means is that people live here and they enjoy living here and there's a lot of fun things to do, but they don't actually work here. They go and they drive somewhere else. To Blacksburg, to Christiansburg, to Fairlawn, to Montgomery County, wherever it is, to work. Well, I have to tell you, if you're going to have a community like that, please plan to pay through the nose every four years because the burden that is held by our residents, by our homeowners, is going to increase exponentially. And it has this particular tax season. Right here for us now. Now, I thought of a way to make this a little easier to understand. And here's what I want you to do. I'm going to give you an assignment and we're going to do this together. Pretend I'm your consumer math teacher. I'm a terrible one and I'm an ugly one, but pretend that I'm your consumer math teacher. And let's just go on a little problem-solving adventure here as I kind of explain how this works. As I understand it. So, I told you that all the money that we bring in, all the revenue that we bring in from real estate taxes, we put into one pot. It's one money. It's one money. So, all your residential, all your business, that revenue that we bring in, after taxing them at the .84 cents per $100 rate, we put that in and come up with a figure. But to make this easier to explain, here's what I'm going to do. Imagine you live in a city and it only has two properties in it. One of them is a widget factory. It's a commercial property. And one of them is a two-bedroom brick ranch owned by Mr. John. Mr. John's house is valued at $100,000 in 2023. That's what the tax assessment said it was worth. And the widget factory, it's valued at $1 million in 2023. And when you add those two properties together, the million-dollar widget factory, the $100,000 brick ranch by John, you come up with a figure of $1.1 million of taxable real estate property within the city that we're talking about. The city with only two properties in it. All right. So we're going to take that $1.1 million, $1,100,000, and we're going to figure out how much revenue that city, the city with only two properties, is bringing in. So if you take that $1.1 million, and I'm going to do my calculator right with you, so I hope you're with me. You're doing the same thing. That $1.1 million, and we're going to divide that by 100. And then we're going to take that figure, and we're going to multiply it by the .84 cents, just like what we have here in Radford, and we're going to come out with a total revenue for the city with just two properties, and that revenue is $9,240. That's how much money in real estate taxes this little city with only two properties in it would bring in. All right. Just like we have, that little city has a reassessment in 2024. They come along, and they do a reassessment, and the widget factory goes up 10%. Well, they were worth a million dollars. That's pretty easy. So they're now worth $1.1 million. But what about Mr. John's? His little house, his little brick ranch? Well, Mr. John's house, it goes up 50%. So it's now worth $150,000. All right. So now the city has a new amount of money that they have total for all their properties. There are two big properties in the city, and right now they are bringing in $1,250,000 of all their properties. That's what it's valued, $1,250,000. Okay. Now, remember, in the 2023 assessment, they had $1.1 million. Now they have $1.25 million. So their total revenue has to be the same before they levy any new taxes. They have to get back down to only making $9,240 just like they were in 2023. They have to have that as a starting point. So how do they do that? Well, you take that $1,250,000, and you have to multiply it. You have to divide it by 100. Then you have to multiply it by a cent, like instead of .84, we've got to find another basis to multiply it by in order to make the same amount of money that they were the year before. Well, I'll save you the trouble. I found a figure, and that's actually 74 cents per $100. You take that $1,250,000, and you divide it by the 100, and then you multiply it by .74, 74 cents per $100. You will come up with a figure of $9,250. That's within $10 of what they were making in 2023. So I've got it pretty close, 74 cents. So you say, great, 74 cents. Everybody's paying 74 cents. The business is paying 74 cents. The resident is paying 74 cents. Seem even? Well, let's look at the tax burden. In 2023, at the 84-cent rate, before the reassessment, before it went up 50 cents, Mr. Johns, at the 84-cent rate, was paying $840 per year. Now, keep in mind now, this was without any tax increase. $840 a year. The widget factory was paying $8,400 a year. That's at the 84-cent rate. But after the widget factory went up 10% in 2024, and Mr. Johns' house went up 50% in 2024, let's see what they're paying now. Mr. Johns, at $150,000, we're going to do the math as usual. We're going to divide it by 100, and we're going to multiply that by 74 cents. Well, his tax bill went up. It's no longer $840. It's actually $1,110. It went up. But what about the widget factory? Well, let's go to his figure. $1,100,000 divided by 100, multiplied by .74, 74 cents. He's paying $8,140 in 2024. What was he paying in 2023? $8,400. The widget factory is paying less than he was paying in 2023. He got a tax break while Mr. Johns, Mr. Johns' taxes, before they've ever added another penny on to the tax rate, is paying $270 more than he was paying in 2023. Now, how did that happen? Well, remember I told you all the monies go into one pot, right? It's all added together. Well, there's a whole lot more residential houses in Radford City than there is businesses. And when the business value stays stagnant, when we're not building new businesses, when was the last time you remember a new business being built in Radford City? It's been about five or six years. When was the last time? But we know about a lot of new residential homes. We know about a lot of sales. And our business market just hasn't been growing. So just like in this city of two, because the taxes on that widget factory only went up 10%, and Mr. Johns went up 50%, Mr. Johns had to make up the difference in the amount of money that the city was bringing in because of his significantly high assessment and tax rate. And that's exactly what's happening in the city of Radford, in my opinion. The burden has increased on the homeowners in the city to pay more and more of the total tax revenue within the city. More and more. And actually, at least with the businesses that I've spoken to and the research with three or four different-sized local businesses, they are getting a tax break in 2024 while you are paying through the teeth. In fact, with council just proposing a five-cent real estate tax increase, they started at that .64, which was the new multiplier, and they've jumped it up to .69 with the new tax rate. We have just witnessed, and we are having the privilege of taking part of, probably, at least within any memory that I can have, the largest real estate tax increase ever in the city of Radford on the homeowners of the city. And across the board, I think you will find that the average homeowner will be paying an additional between 10 and 15 cents more per $100 in real estate taxes in 2024 than they were paying in 2023. Talk about redistributing the burden. We have certainly redistributed the burden, and we've taken more of it. Now, don't misconstrue something. There is a silver lining here. It means that our businesses and our business properties would pay less taxes, and I'm happy about that. That means that possibly maybe some of the costs will not go up for us that do business with them here in the city. It may help a little bit with business recruitment, having that lower tax rate for them since the value of their property is assessed lower. That may help. It may be a factor in an evaluation for some company that's coming here. There may be a slight silver lining. But for us homeowners, particularly those that can afford it the least, this is devastating. To have your taxes go up 10% or 15% in a given year is not something any of us really can plan for. And if you're on a fixed income, if you're elderly, you're living on Social Security, you're living on a pension that was worth something 20 years ago, it's not worth nothing now, you're hurting. And this is a bad deal. And I think as we look at that 5 cents that they're increasing, and I'm not, listen, I think the council that's sitting there now are paying for the sins of the previous council. They're stuck. They don't have any money. They can't pay their bills. They're month to month. They've got loans that they borrowed just to pay bills back that they can't pay back. They're in a bad shape. They have no choice but to raise taxes. And as I mentioned in a previous podcast, we are going to pay the super tax. And we're about to pay it. It's just a whole lot dumber than I even thought it was myself. You know, I could go back, and I could really go item to item to item to item. Things that I've listed in podcasts, like Will Rafferty Remain an Independent City? The 12 Plagues of Rafferty? You know, the podcast about paying the stupid tax. I mean, there's a lot of issues. I could bump off each one of them and go item to item to item to item. And some bad decisions that were made in the past. But one in particular that kind of stands really tall in this particular case is the fact that the foundry property for the last five, approaching six years has sat undeveloped. And by the way, it is still not in the hands of the EDA. For some reason, they continue to find ways to not get that process done. It's still not in the hands of the EDA. You know, proof of ownership of a problem is really in showing what you've done, what you've accomplished. You can talk about all the things that you say you've done and the contacts that you say you've made and the people that you say that you've asked to help. I don't believe any of it. You know why? Because I don't see any results. I see stagnant property on the foundry for the last six years. You had the majority. You had the votes. You did nothing. Okay? So we have not seen the growth in industrial and commercial that we need as a city so that those that want to live here, those that want to grow old here, those that want to start new families and new homes here, so that we can afford to live here. You can't compare us to everybody around. No. We're our own island in and of ourselves in many, many ways. We've watched, you know, in addition to this commercial issue, the fact that we're not growing like we should be growing. We're losing properties that were formerly commercial to Rafford University. We've watched as they've purchased up business or commercial property within the city and yanked it off the tax rolls as a result. Now, one building that we have seen built in the city is a hotel. It's done fairly well over the past year. An asset, right? Well, I hate to put this prediction out there, but I don't think it's going to stay on the tax rolls. I think as soon as they possibly can, that's going to be pulled off of the tax rolls too, and we'll receive zero revenue from that. After having struggled to give them and make payments for incentives that we've agreed with them on, after already giving them $500,000 worth of incentives for utility connections and this other 80% incentive that we're working on getting them paid for right now, I think eventually they're going to jerk it off the tax rolls, and once again we'll have another commercial property that's not being taxed or that's not growing, and we're going to be hurting that much more. Just a little more burden, just a little more burden for the taxpayer paying homeowners here in the city of Rafford. Now, I'm a big promises made, promises kept kind of guy. It's important to me when I tell someone that I'm going to do something, or I tell them I'm not going to do something, that I keep my word. And I mentioned before, in 2018, our mayor now, while running for office, mentioned that he would not raise taxes by 10th cent or 15th cent or any of that, that those were just unfounded rumors, they were not true. That his job was to make sure, though, that the city could pay its bills. Well, we can't pay our bills. And you did raise taxes more than 10 cents, quite a lot more. In fact, with this assessment and this 5 cents alone that's just been proposed, my mother's home will be paying 10.5 cents more for $100 of assessment than we were in 2023, just in this year. So I think I could fairly well make the claim. You blew out the 10 cents, you blew out 15 cents, you're up to about 20 cents in increased taxes, 20 cents per $100, if you look at the fine print and the exact amount that residents are paying for their residential homes. You did what you said you wouldn't do. And the result? Well, we got a couple pocket parks. We have a skate park. We've got some murals and some other things around town, they look good. We're just broke. And we're struggling to figure out if we're going to remain an independent city. The odds are that we're not. I believe with Mayor Starnes, as we talked about it, I believe if we make the necessary cuts, I believe we can. But as I watch this budget process, I have to say that those cuts really didn't happen. They happened in words, I just didn't see them really happen in deeds. And that's unfortunate. You know, with all the bluster, with all the talk, with the idea that we've all got to come together and get this done together, we can make it if we all agree to make cuts. The truth of it is, there are only two groups that I can really put my finger on and show that they're bearing the burden of the bad decisions made by the previous council. Number one, we just went over, and that's the taxpayer. We're all in our homes, for our homes, for our real estate taxes, we're going to pay an additional effective 10 to 15 cents more per $100 of value of our property in 2024. We will take the largest burden for the bad decisions that were made. We will pay the highest stupid tax. And who else will pay? Well, our employees will pay, the employees of the City of Bradford. They will not be receiving a COLA increase. I agree with the decision. We can't afford to give it. But though prices are rising and though inflation is going through the roof, and I know our mayor and city manager, they blame everything on this terrible recession and this terrible inflation rate. Effectively 17%. That's not killing any of the other localities. They're surviving. Not us. Not us, but apparently the inflation only affects people in this nine-mile stretch here in Bradford City. But the truth of it is, the employees will bear that burden because they won't receive a COLA increase. And the citizens that live in the city will bear the majority of it and pay the heftiest stupid tax that's ever been paid in the City of Bradford before. Congratulations. You won the prize. We all won it together. You know, Ronald Reagan had a quote that was really, really funny. And he said, you know, I think I've always felt that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are that I'm from the government and I'm here to help. And for those that share that motto on their Facebook page, would you please do us a favor? Please stop helping us. You are killing us. Please, please stop helping us. Hey, I want to thank you for joining me here today. Sorry to give you the bad news and let you know. And maybe you can go and you can look at your tax ticket and maybe it won't be quite so bad for you. Maybe it's going to be worse. I don't know. But you check that out. Prove me right or wrong. I'd like to hear from you. Did I get it right? I'd like to know. Just let me know. Again, you can reach me on my email address at OneMoreRoundPodcastKM at gmail.com OneMoreRoundPodcastKM at gmail.com Now, I will finish this podcast off as I always do, reading the theme verse and that's found in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verses 13 and 14. And here's what God's word says. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Hey, thanks for joining me again today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. God bless you and we'll see you again soon here in the room. OneMoreRoundPodcastKM