Allow monthly tax payments
The tax burden in the City of Kingston has become absolutely brutal. There is little question that city spending must be reduced and the tax burden reduced on residents and businesses. However, even if city and school taxes could be reduced by 10 percent, the burden would still be considerable.
Every year, Kingstonians must make two massive payments of their city taxes and two massive payments of their school taxes. The second payment of the school taxes is almost always in December. Citizens are saving money to give their children a Merry Christmas or a Happy Hannukah, yet have to deduct from their holiday money to pay the “Grinch” the second half of school taxes.
If elected mayor, I will order the Comptroller’s Office to offer a new option for city taxpayers. If a taxpayer desires, they may keep the current payment system. However, taxpayers (residents and businesses) may also choose a new monthly payment system. Essentially, the tax payment would be collected in the form of monthly payments, so as to ease the burden of paying 4 massive payments. It would also allow for easier budgeting for households and businesses on a monthly basis.
The city does not accept partial payments. So, if you get behind on the massive payment, they will only accept full payment along with the monetary penalties which are quite steep. This prevents many people from paying down their tax debt. A monthly system would help alleviate this problem.
My hope as mayor is to reduce city spending and begin to bring down the massive tax burden on our citizens and our businesses, all of whom are struggling mightily in this extremely weak economy. Payment of taxes, however, will always be required, even if reduced. Why not make the payment as easy as possible and allow a monthly payment program?
Currently, there is only one monthly payment program offered by the city. Unfortunately, it requires a property owner to be three years behind and in the process of foreclosure. Why are we offering such a program only at the last minute when people are within inches of losing their home? Is not home ownership something to be encouraged? Since the entire tax payment system is run by computer, it would not be difficult to arrange for a monthly payment plan. It would give assistance to working people struggling to make ends meet.
As mayor, I will look to reduce city property taxes. I will also implement this monthly payment program so that citizens and businesses who feel this would be of assistance can take advantage of the opportunity, pay their taxes, and keep their homes or businesses.
Rich Cahill Jr.
Kingston
Surely Pastor Arnold believes in the integrity of children(per his book and his group’s general practice of granting esteem to its children) as opposed to the regularly brutal policies perpetrated thereon(especially by the Catholic church and especially in my day). As such what is the purpose of all this talk against Pastor Arnold? It seems the answer is really quite simple:you are the “liberal elite ideologues”, supposedly well-educated and thus feel you have a monopoly on truth and anyone who dares assert you may not have that privilege is to be persecuted “a la Sottile’s bloggate” and its attempt to do likewise to me), out to prove(at any cost of logic or reason it seems)that religion of any kind and religious people of any kind have no business having a voice or a seat at your exclusive table. Having said that, let me now propose a valid reason upon which to “perhaps” be validly critical of Arnold and the Burderhof: although they “claim” to separate themselves from the rest of the world, they most certainly “play footsie”(and happily, since they recognize the angst their separation inculcates within them at the prospect that their children will hate them without such access to educational privileges) with the local Catholic elites that run education inasmuch as they are happy to send their children through such institutions(not unlike the “flavoring” of remembering that Nazi Germany was under Roman Catholicism also). In my personal experience(as well as that of countless others some of whom I’ve known), there is a clearcut disconnect between honoring the child maximally and honoring the Parochial School System(which always practiced the ethic of “the end justifies the means”–not unlike the general flavoring of Nazi Germany). Thus in my day we had Gerard Gretzinger and his Children’s Theatre at Coleman High(which produced the “most powerful woman in Hollywood who got there through Disney, Inc.)to counter such evils at least in theory and in the ritual of putting on such plays(now villified, inevitably, because he got a position with huge political flavoring and huge political bashing as well, made equivalent morally to Tim Mathews, the corrupt cop who also got his materialist values teaching out of Coleman High–and one thinks, earlier than that also). And then of course there’s the case of the Jews, who because they cannot retain a pure Jewish identity AND be as good in business as they were taught to be from the leaving of the womb, have to crawl up the butts of those who run the Catholic elitist systems(ie, Beneidctine Hospital, etc.) for their business-flavored bread.
Perhaps–and just and only perhaps—Pastor Arnold is thus, in some sense and to some degree–disingenuous if not hypocritical in a practical sense. My conclusion over that is merely that “parents have the same general angst for their children in whatever context” and most certainly not, as some would have it, refelective of a tyrant who actually believes in the methods of Nazi Germany while continuing to rail against it both historically and as a means to validate the group’s existence. I have had contact with him and he seems much more genuine than the few who would gratuitously indulge their own sociopolitical ideologies by finding fault with such a soul–whether done on here or in any fora.