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Spending Your Tax Dollars !
By Bob Drake
You may or may not know this but our City Commissioners just love to spend OUR money on things that really do not make a lot of sense to the average man or woman on the streets of Valley City.
This is a clever scam on the tax payer brought to you by our elected officials at City Hall. This scam is called "Retail Image Enhancement", sounds good doesn't it? But what you do not know is that the money to fund the Retail Image Enhancement Fund comes from the one cent sales tax, that is used to go for economic development and property tax relief. Below is a list of entities in town that got a piece of your sales tax money to buy new signs and misc. This list was provided to me by the City.
02-01-99 Swimming Pool 100,000.00
09-10-99 Another Time Coffee Shop 1,148.00
10-29-99 Homespun Charm 500.00
11-26-99 Victorian Charm 3,000.00
10-01-00 Pine Country Nursery 3,000.00
02-14-00 Hired Consultant/VC Chamber 7,000.00
10-01-01 Grotberg Electric 3,000.00
02-04-02 Beautification Committee 3,000.00
02-04-02 Open Door/Prairie Inn (deobligated 2/04)
04-29-02 Pine Country Nursery 2,184.00
06-03-02 Culligan 3,000.00
07-01-02 Sheyenne Auto Center 3,000.00
07-01-02 The Foamer 2nd Ave NW 3,000.00
07-01-02 The Foamer Central Ave 3,000.00
07-01-02 Wade's Service Center 3,000.00
07-01-02 J&K Seamless 651.36
07-30-02 Thrivent Investment 2,500.00
07-30-02 OK Tire (deobligated 6-03)
02-03-03 Valley Auto Part 3,000.00
04-07-03 Bitz Tire & Service Inc 3,000.00
04-07-03 Hair Therapy 228.00
04-07-03 Oliver Nathan Funeral 2,770.00
04-07-03 Wagar Nursery 3,000.00
10-06-03 Valley Gallery 3,000.00
10-06-03 VC Chamber of Commerce 3,000.00
01-05-04 Kids Come 1st Inc 3,000.00
02-02-04 Lentz Chiropractic 3,000.00
04-05-04 Open Door/Prairie Inn 3,000.00
04-05-04 Pizza Corner 3,000.00
05-17-04 Willis Johnson (Cathy Class 3,000.00
07-06-04 CK Properties 3,000.00
08-02-04 Valley Fashions 500.00
10-18-04 Jamestown Implement 3,000.00
10-18-04 Lerud-Johnson-Schuldt Funer 3,000.00
11-01-04 VC Chamber-Americana Cha 1,000.00
04-04-05 Barnes County 2,645.00
04-04-05 Subway 1,300.00
06-06-05 John's I-94 Tesoro 3,000.00
Total as of June 6th 2005----$194,926.36
Can someone tell me when it became our responsibility as tax payers to buy signs for local businesses?????? That is what this Retail Image Enhancement Fund is to pay for better signs for local businesses.
I would think that if a business cannot buy a sign out of funds that it generates by doing business in town it shouldn't be in business. We can see by the list of businesses that there is no shortage of people waiting for a free hand out of tax payers dollars in Valley City.
The economic development sales tax money was broken up into two parts, the reason for that was to entice you vote for the one cent sales tax for economic development in the first place. 80% was supposed to be for economic development and 20% for property tax relief (the 20% was a bribe). Now the 1 % sales tax is broken down like this. 70 % economic development 5 % Retail Image Enhancement and 25 % property tax relief. If it was up to me there would not be a 5% for Retail Image Enhancement Fund. It is not, nor will it ever be tax payers duty to pay for crap like this and our elected officials should be ashamed of themselves.
We as citizens of Valley City need to be more active in our community, next time you go into one of these businesses that got money from this fund tell them you don't like it one bit, ask them why do we have to pay our way and theirs too ! Better yet ask them for a discount, and see how they like it.
Get involved in your community, get out and vote and things like the Retail Image Enhancement Fund will be a thing of the past.
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