Recently you probably received, as I did a “Notice of Property Valuation & Tax Changes” the precursor of your real estate tax bill to come.
When I opened mine I was almost at a loss for words, dumbstruck, infuriated, speechless, incredulous, and very nearly in tears by this ill-timed financial smackdown.
Taxes on my home in one year went from just over $5000 to just short of $9000. A nearly $4000 increase, almost doubling itself. How is that possible? How is that even legal?
Under “CHANGES” on this document, is listed a “7.7% 2022 increase”. How dare they insult our intelligence in this way! I don’t know where the Summit County Auditor/Staff went to school but my increase is 78.6%!!.
And I can’t afford that. Nor do I want too.
Nor should I have to.
There is, and unfortunately , long has been, a perception among East Summit County folk that the West Summit County folk are uber-wealthy second-home owners who flit in and out of Park City but have roots elsewhere. Some do. Then there is the rest of us. We live here. Full-time. This is our home. Many of us have been here 20,30,40 years. The natives among us for a lifetime when this was a “ghost town”. Together we make up vibrant, solid, middle class; we are the backbone of this community, this town. Old-timers, part-timers, newcomers and sages, ski bums and shop owners, businessmen and women, miners and mayors, hairdressers and hospitality workers. We are Park City.
Exorbitant Real Estate Taxes, increased such as these, are not only burdensome, but backbreaking for some. That “some” is the middle class, the working class. Add it to the price of a gallon of gas, a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs and all the runaway costs. Then stand back and watch that vibrant, working, middle class disappear. Here in Park City, too.
Perhaps that is the goal.
How simple would it be to manage a “ghost town”, a new one, full of homes unlived in most of the time, occupants who are uninvolved, who vote elsewhere.
A politician’s heaven.
But we are here. And, we vote.
And we will have a long memory of this one.
Unless the “Proposed 2022 Budget” is brought down to earth where it becomes financially tenable without gouging the populace, old and new, full-time and part-time.
I do not presently know what recourse is open and/or available to us as taxpayers but we are going to find out.
Perhaps the Governor knows.
We will not let this go unchallenged.
We are not done here.
I am an old widow lady now. The best of my rabble-rousing days are behind me. And not that many days lie before me anymore.
But, I will join and support any movement organized to protest this exorbitant and ill-timed real estate tax increase. I can still do that. And, I can still write, as you see. What we need is young, bold concerned citizens of the greater Park City area to step up and lead or join a community movement in protest of this outrageous tax increase. We need a Utah version of California Proposition13, retroactive, to wipe out this shocking and unconscionable act taken against the citizens of this community.
It is particularly heinous in this historically difficult and burdensome time in which we all now live and struggle.
The timing could not be worse, Or more tone-deaf.
This cannot stand. Or, it will come for us again.
We haven’t seen the last of them.
Proposition 13 – Utah Style – Now!!
And Retroactive!