Editor, Times-Union:
I don’t always read every letter to the Times-Union. I expect you to pay me just as much inattention. It is only fair, especially since this subject is tardy.
Indiana taxpayers are like the proverbial old boar. He’s unaware he’s been gored until well after the fact. Because most of us pay our property taxes via escrow accounts, the real tax amounts usually lie dormant in the mail for some period.
If you are a Warsaw taxpayer, you may not have known your escrow school taxes increased 145.54% 2022-2023, a difference of $1,356.73. That’s what my mailed bill, Table 3, says.
I pick on schools because it is the largest single dollar amount paid and increased on my tax bill. My township taxes, though, jumped 239.01%, but the measly dollar amount popped up only $7.72. Actually, every single tax rate on my tax bill took a healthy hit.
I think we should require our elected officials to wear for a time a bright red T-shirt with the increase in tax for their taxing authority emblazoned in big white letters. If nothing else, it would be fun! If their rate goes down, they get white shirts with blue lettering.
Let’s blame inflation. You don’t have to blame President Biden, either, but I will.
I have a personal ongoing complaint with schools: “Planned Obsolescence.” It just seems no school ever reaches any maturity these days. Is preventive maintenance hidden from my view or are our children more destructive than when I was in school? Why is it Wabash High School down the road still boasts that lovely central building my mother graduated in and the rest of us are building a second or third new?
It must have something to do with how one calculates vanishing time.
Dan Lee
Warsaw, via email