However, keeping in mind that Lake County just raised sales taxes last year (or just prior to that) without a vote of the county residents, and Laketran just passed an additional county-wide sales tax for a 10 year period without a very good justification of how that would be spent.  In 10 years time, we’ll see that as a renewal I’m sure.  Costing every resident – even those with little income – more dollars every year.  Sales taxes are not progressive taxes, they tax consumer spending and those with little spending ability are hurt the worst in a sales tax scenario as those taxes take away more of what little available funds they have to purchase necessary commodities for daily living.

Social Security increases do not keep up with inflation to be sure – I think my husband saw his benefits increase by less than $100 a month this year, of which an additional $30 was taken back for increased Medicare cost.  I get it.  However, the 4.32% you see in the wages & benefits line of our 5 year forecast is attributable to rising health care costs as well as salaries – and the rise in benefit costs is growing at a much higher percentage year to year than wages are.  Gary can likely provide you with those individual breakdowns.  We all know how the cost of health benefits keeps rising.  And to be clear on that end, The State of Ohio Public Employee Retirement System for example just passed on a very large increase to the beneficiaries of their pension system.  So it’s not just Riverside experiencing increasing health care costs.  The entire county sees this as a very large issue of concern as I’m sure you are well aware.

As for an income tax, the topic was considered at length prior to Gary’s arrival at Riverside, maybe even before Tom’s election.  Back in the 2010-2012 period when we had to make drastic cuts to our budgets due to compounded circumstances – inefficiencies that have since been addressed (we’ve gotten so much smarter since then!), falling property values etc.  Considering that the largest block of “anti-tax” voters is also located in the community with the highest district wages, it was determined that an income tax levy would fail even more miserably than a property tax levy that would be proposed.

While I realize that an income tax shields seniors from rising property taxes, I also realize that wage earners vote and even an income tax of 1% levied on their earnings will cost them more than a property tax would – and would likely fail at even higher rates among those voter populations.  Considering that “taxes” in general are now a limited federal income tax deduction doesn’t help in either case.

I’d be willing to consider an income tax, but school income tax levies in general have largely been reserved throughout the state to compensate districts in areas where property value is low and agricultural property use is high.  Those districts don’t generate a wealth of property tax, and the law to allow school district income taxes was passed based on the assumption that those districts needed a way to generate funding when the only source of tax generation at the time was on property values.  That doesn’t mean we can’t consider one.  It just means that it would be exponentially harder to pass.  It also means that even low-wage earners who have no property wealth would also be taxed on their earnings.

In my view, it shifts the tax burden from the seniors to the low income earners, and that’s probably even less fair than our current structure.  And in many cases, the seniors have a better ability to pay than those current low-wage earners for many reasons too numerous to expound on here.

Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents added to whatever numerical and statistical data Gary can provide to you.