Phillip’s Wish is a local charity formed by a young boy and his mom. They give out blankets, gloves and other items to the homeless each year, and this year their sendoff is at Tom Thumb this Saturday at 10:00 am.
Stop by their site and offer your help if you can this Holiday Season.
Governor Perry of Texas and Governor Sanford of South Carolina provide solid examples in their home states why blue state politics and the economies that follow do not work. While CEOs crawl to Washington in ‘green’ cars to grovel in front of clueless politicians and governors like Schwarzenegger continue insane fiscal policies while expecting your tax dollars to come to their rescue, Governors Perry and Sanford point to far better solutions in their states – and why the federal government’s ideas are flawed.
EXCERPT from Governors Against State Bailouts, WSJ, 02Dec08
“. . . the bailout mentality threatens Americans’ sense of personal responsibility.
In a free-market system, competition and one’s own personal stake motivate people to do their best. In this process, the winners create wealth, jobs and new investment, while others go back to the drawing board better prepared to try again.
To an unprecedented degree, government is currently picking winners and losers in the private marketplace, and throwing good money after bad. A prudent investor takes money from low-yield investments and puts them in those that yield better returns. Recent government intervention is doing the opposite — taking capital generated from productive activities and throwing it at enterprises that in many cases need to reorganize their business model.
From USA Today:
Battered by record foreclosures and falling tax revenue, cities are laying off workers, raising fees and closing libraries and recreation centers.
“Almost every city in the country is feeling the impact,” says Chris Hoene, director of policy and research at the National League of Cities.
A survey in September found that city finance officers expect revenue from property, sales and income taxes to decrease 4.3% this year, Hoene says.
The problem will be worse next year, he says, because there is a lag between current economic conditions and when they affect city revenue.
“Local officials know that if things are tight now,” he says, “tougher choices are coming.”
The survey found that 79% of cities expect their finances to worsen in 2009.
With Keller’s large reserve fund and the City Manager’s knowledge of the possible upcoming problems, I’m hoping we are in a good position for next year. I don’t have near the confidence in the School District.
Update: I posted this from work where I’m catching up and forgot to post the most important part:
Sally Reed of Friends of Libraries USA says cities are making the wrong cuts, closing libraries just as more people use their free services.
“It’s really backwards thinking,” she says. “They’ve become increasingly important, and yet libraries are the first ones cut.”
I stated basically the same thing during the Library controversy. In 2002 when the economy fell off here, the first thing we cut was Library Service, but a couple of years later we were to believe that we could afford to build a $10 million Library without a tax increase.
I’ve enjoyed studying the Pilgrims’ journey to America and subsequent settlement for over two decades. As I gathered information about the Pilgrims it was instructive to note that their early experiment with communal property (socialism) resulted in lack of food and strife. As soon as they switched to a free enterprise approach there was plenty of food for everybody. This is a good case study illustrating the intrinsic value of private property and the importance to a society’s future of rejecting socialism.
How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims
EXCERPT:
Bradford’s comments make it clear that common ownership demoralized the community far more than the tax. It was not Pilgrims laboring for investors that caused so much distress but Pilgrims laboring for other Pilgrims. Common property gave rise to internecine conflicts that were much more serious than the transatlantic ones. The industrious (in Plymouth) were forced to subsidize the slackers (in Plymouth). The strong “had no more in division of victuals and clothes” than the weak. The older men felt it disrespectful to be “equalized in labours” with the younger men..
This suggests that a form of communism was practiced at Plymouth in 1621 and 1622. No doubt this equalization of tasks was thought (at first) the only fair way to solve the problem of who should do what work in a community where there was to be no individual property: If everyone were to end up with an equal share of the property at the end of seven years, everyone should presumably do the same work throughout those seven years. The problem that inevitably arose was the formidable one of policing this division of labor: How to deal with those who did not pull their weight?
The Pilgrims had encountered the free-rider problem. Under the arrangement of communal property one might reasonably suspect that any additional effort might merely substitute for the lack of industry of others. And these “others” might well be able-bodied, too, but content to take advantage of the communal ownership by contributing less than their fair share. As we shall see, it is difficult to solve this problem without dividing property into individual or family-sized units. And this was the course of action that William Bradford wisely took.
The Soviet Union and other Communist governments repeated the mistakes of the Pilgrims on an intensified level in the 20th Century. Millions lost their lives from these horrific experiments. America is treading the path (‘spread the wealth around’) rejected by the Pilgrims and by those who wrote our Constitution. Will we learn from history and change, or repeat the same mistakes?
I have been watching CNBC tonight and on the scroll at the top of the screen, I just saw where December Gasoline Futures are trading at 99 cents a gallon. I guess the evil cabal that controls Oil Prices and forced the surge to $145 a barrel last summer must be on Christmas Break.
Like pigs lining up at the trough, the City of Dallas is formulating a plan to ask for money in the next stimulus bill.
My question to you, will Keller get in line or take a pass?
On Monday:
The Keller Economic Development Board and the Keller City Council will conduct a joint meeting at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 17, at Keller Town Hall. The meeting is set to discuss the goals and objectives of the KEDB, the City’s incentives policy and determine target businesses that the City would like to attract.
On Tuesday:
This past Tuesday, the Council met in a work session to discuss the proposed changes to the UDC in detail. The Council is planning to continue its review during a workshop starting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18, and will accept comments from the public during the regular session that starts at 7 p.m.
On Wednesday:
The public is encouraged to attend and participate in a second workshop meeting on the Keller Town Center Visioning Project at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 19, at Keller Town Hall. The focus is to help develop an updated plan to guide the development of the remaining parcels in Town Center.
All items above courtesy of the Mayor’s weekly update.
With the price of Natural Gas falling in the past few months, it may be time to look at changing your electric provider or at least locking in a new rate. When going to Powertochoose.org today I found rates as low as 10.9¢ for month to month, or 11.3¢ for a six month contract. If you think Natural Gas prices will continue to fall, you might want to lock in a shorter contract, if you think they will spike back up, now is the time to lock in for a long period of time.
My contract had expired with my current provider and when I happened to look at my bill, they had bumped up my rate to over 14 cents.
Maybe, according to Kathleen Pender:
Should you keep paying your mortgage?
If you have significant equity in your home, absolutely.
If you don’t, it’s getting harder to answer that question, especially when our government keeps giving people who owe more than their homes are worth so many reasons not to pay.
Last week, the government announced a program that will substantially lower payments for many homeowners who have little or no equity, but only if they are at least 90 days delinquent.
Critics say the plan, which applies to loans owned or guaranteed by government wards Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac among others, could encourage people to suspend payments.
But what about the moral obligation to pay off a debt?
Typical, if you do the right thing, you get run over by those running for a bailout.
Maybe it’s time to go John Galt….
Ft. Worth Business Press has a timely article on what different Cities are doing to attract retailers:
Wetzel said cities can begin the process of aggressively marketing to retailers by cleaning up their permitting process, which makes building new stores easier for retailers and developers alike, as well as creating an up-to-date inventory of all retail sites in the city and creating incentive plans, which don’t have to include tax cuts, to attract retailers to the city.
“All of these things let retailers know that you’re going to work with them better than the city next door and that’s the kind of thing that can make a decision for a retailer,” she said. “An incentive for them could be you helping them with an expedient permitting and code process. If you’re invested in streamlining your process, they’ll want to do business with you.”
From the Keller Citizen today:
The Keller Economic Development Board is eyeing an aggressive incentive policy that includes sales tax breaks and fee waivers for prospective businesses.
The nine-member board proposes waiving all construction-related fees and sales taxes over a business’s first three years. It would be a broad attempt to pump up the city’s lackluster commercial tax base.
My first thought was this was way too aggressive and the City Council will never pass it. My next thought was with all the doom and gloom in the news, this may indeed have a chance of passing.
What are your thoughts?
I’m too passionate about this issue to let my remarks languish in the comments. — Jim Carson
In my first city council goal setting retreat, I proposed that one of our goals should be the dramatic reduction, and ideally elimination, of impact fees.
Impact fees are substantial penalties imposed on developers under the pretense that the development causes an increased “impact” on city services like roads, police, fire, water and sewer. While it is certainly true that development does cause costs for these services to rise, that cost is more than made up by water and sewer usage fees and property taxes. In retail development they are also supplemented by sales tax. The idea that developers impose a net cost on a community is a despicable fraud. Just look at the near-unanimous call for MORE DEVELOPMENT for crying out loud.
Impact fees are hidden taxes promoted by cowardly city managers, self-important mayors and council members, and freeloading citizens who want ever more services and ever less taxes. Impact fees are a way of gouging the productive elements of society who often have no vote.
When we were prioritizing our goals, Steve Trine whined when I put three or four of my dots (votes of importance) on impact fee reduction, claiming that it wasn’t “fair” that I had gamed the system. Bob Kirk stated his belief in the lie that development is a net cost to a community, and the matter was dropped.
All that notwithstanding, I am still against the idea of granting breaks to selected businesses temporarily. Whatever happened to the idea of the level playing field? Better known as Equal Protection of the Law, as expressed in the Fourteenth Amendment.
I doubt there is a single person in Keller who would call for punitive taxes to be levied on small upstart businesses. But by imposing draconian impact fees on everyone, and then granting relief from these fees to a few larger, more legally sophisticated developers (like was done for Tabani/Stein Mart), we’re effectively doing the same thing.
As for “rebating” sales taxes — again for selected businesses — we need to remember that these taxes never belonged to the business. They belong to the people of Keller from the moment of the retail transaction. Returning sales taxes to a business is financially indistinguishable from the city endorsing your property tax check and handing it to the retailer.
The city council should abolish impact fees for all and “rebate” sales taxes to none. Fair’s fair.
Ft. Worth Weekly has a depressing (and poorly written) article this week:
Michael Berry, president of Hillwood Properties, which has built 2.5 million square feet of industrial, office, and retail space near Alliance Airport, was quoted recently by an online business publication as predicting that that there will be little or no new Hillwood construction for the next 12 months. “Even in our market, I can’t imagine you’re going to see much new construction,” he told the local chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association.
That will affect Alliance Town Center, which has 500,000 square feet of retail space that is 85 percent leased. But the next phases, which will add a million square feet, have been put on hold, according to several sources. “If we were trying to do that project today, we wouldn’t be building it,” Berry said at the meeting, according to GlobeSt.com.
Kipp Whitman, president of Rland Properties, which is developing several retail projects in north Fort Worth, said tenants aren’t pulling out of leases, “but they are pushing back their move-in dates. … It is too early to tell what will happen.”
