By: Soo Asheim
Email: sooasheim@aol.com
FARGO VOTERS TO DECIDE ON NEXT THIRTY YEARS OF TAXES
Commissioner Tim Mahoney made the motion for the people of Fargo to decide whether they are willing to fork over another thirty-year stint on a half- cent sales tax or if they will tell Mayor Walaker to “walk this way” and take a flying leap into the Red. Commissioners Williams and Piepkorn are opposed to the tax, while Commissioners Mahoney, Wimmer and Mayor Walaker are in favor of the tax continuing for another thirty years. The following is an outline of what the present city taxes in Fargo are allocated for:
The amount of sales tax allocated to each function is listed below:
Purpose Rate Authorization
Infrastructure 1/2 cent 10 years: 2002 through June 2012
Infrastructure 1 cent 20 years: 1/1/2009 – 12/31/2028
Flood control 1/2 cent 20 years: 1/1/2010 – 12/31/2029
Infrastructure Sales Tax
On June 13, 2006, citizens of Fargo voted to amend Article 3 of the Home Rule Charter to authorize collection of a one-percent municipal sales, gross receipt and use tax. This commenced January 1, 2009 and will expire on December 31, 2028.
The City of Fargo will use this sales tax for infrastructure capital improvements which may include the following: streets and traffic management; water supply and treatment needs, including construction or expansion of water treatment facilities; water distribution system needs; sewage treatment and collection system needs, including construction or expansion of sewage treatment facilities, and flood protection projects.
Flood Control Sales Tax
On June 30, 2009, citizens of Fargo voted to amend Article 3 of the Home Rule Charter to authorize collection of a one-half percent municipal sales, gross receipt and use tax. This commenced January 1, 2010 and will expire on December 31, 2029. This sales tax is utilized by the City of Fargo for flood risk protection, mitigation and reduction.
In June, the tax-paying folks of Fargo will again decide whether you have had enough of the excessive city taxes, or if you want to continue paying. Considering it isn’t only the citizens of Fargo who pay Fargo’s city taxes, but all the people in surrounding cities and towns, as well as visitors to the city of Fargo, I for one am biased and hope like heck the vote goes south. However, that’s from a self-interest point of view. I don’t live in Fargo and obviously I’m not going to be in favor of having to pay more for whatever I buy there. On the other hand, I do appreciate Fargo repairing their streets and roads as I also drive a lot in Fargo.
“Half a dozen of one and a six of the other.” Either way, Fargo, it’s going to be on your ballot in June, so remember, this is YOUR decision, not that of the City Commission. They are only giving you an option to decide, and something tells me this could be a hot issue on the radio airwaves before the June election.
AND THE WINNER IS…
“Failure is success if we learn from it.”
— Malcolm Forbes
For those who have forgotten or missed last week’s column, I quoted a number of famous lines from equally famous people, and several responded as to which was their favorite. The above quote by Malcolm Forbes (Remember him?? He rode into Sturgis on a huge hog with Elisabeth Taylor about twenty years ago) was the favorite of the 23 responses I received. And I don’t think it is because Malcolm Forbes said it.
No, I think it is because this is the best way most of us humans can acknowledge our weaknesses and mistakes without losing face. It is hard to admit
“Wellll, Charley, I really messed this up, didn’t I?” But when we can admit a mistake we make with an asterisk beside it, then add “but I sure won’t make that mistake again!”, it seems to make the people around us feel much less harmed or at least more willing to forgive us our imperfections. Aside from that, hopefully, we actually do learn from the screw-ups we make in our lives.
But what about those people we all know who just keep going down the same destructive road time after time, making life impossible for themselves and the people who love them? How do we forgive them? Should we forgive them? Forgiveness isn’t always as easy as one would believe. If you’re religious, and the person of concern is simply a friend or an associate, you might pray for them or talk to whatever spirits you center your own life around. But if the person is a family member or a relative you are close to, how do you continue to live with them as a part of your daily life? Or do you? When is it time to say “ENOUGH ALREADY! Either get off the road to hell or don’t come see me anymore, don’t ask me for forgiveness, and don’t expect me to pick up the pieces of your existence again!”
As I recall my days of sponsoring an Al-a-teen many years ago, those were the choices. It always seemed rather ‘black and white’ to me, and when you have lived long enough, it’s easy to realize life is really not black and white. There are many shades of grey. For teenagers who deal daily with alcohol-soaked parents or others with any sort of addiction, learning to forgive is easy. The hard part is learning to forget. More often than not, the “forget” part is never going to happen. Not completely. Each scenario leading up to whatever the crisis might have been will be like a recording in their brain, and it doesn’t take much to trigger the film fest of nightmares played out over and over again.
Sometimes the best we can hope for is that while the fallen keep repeating the same mistakes of their lives, through their own torment the lessons of failure repeated have made an indelible mark on another so deeply, all the witnessed blunders will protect another from making the same.
Sad as the reality is, sometimes that’s the best we can hope for from those for whom we want only the best life has to offer, but for whatever reasons there may be, simply don’t want it enough for themselves to learn that failure is forgivable, so long as it doesn’t become the excuse we use to avoid success.
AND SPEAKING OF FAILURES….
The “racino” ideas to support a new Vikings Stadium failed Monday in the Minnesota State Senate.
Although the latest plan had called for directing the new tax revenue toward merit-based college scholarships, modeled on Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship program, among the latest in a long string of potential recipients for racino money; the project’s backers have floated racino cash as a way to pay for everything from local economic development projects, to accelerating repayment of delayed state aid payments to public schools, to a source of public financing for construction of a new Minnesota Vikings stadium. Racino lobbyist Dick Day — a former Senate Republican leader — said after the vote that he and allies were already working on a new version of the proposal. The full Minnesota House actually passed a racino bill in 2004, but it died in the Senate; a version has never made it to the governor’s desk. The proposal has long met opposition from both opponents of expanded gambling and from Minnesota Indian tribes and their political allies who see unwanted competition to existing tribal casinos.
Not to mention that Gov. Dayton has been lukewarm to using racino money to help fund a Vikings stadium, saying he believes it would get tied up in lawsuits by Indian tribes in a way that could delay stadium construction.
It’s starting to look like Mr. “Ziggy” may end up paying for his own stadium after all.
ANY question or comment or editorial letter can be sent to: Soo Asheim at sooasheim@aol.com or to Tammy Finney at: tfiney@ncppub.com