Eliminate the garbage tax at what cost

It’s easy to shake your fist at the clouds and say “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.

It’s almost as easy to do the same thing every other Wednesday at the Niagara Falls City Council meeting except you need to travel to city hall and sign up to speak before the meeting.

Heck, you can even do it twice, once early because you don’t understand an agenda item, and again, later, because the roads aren’t paved, you hate potholes and Taj Mah Dog Shelter is still not open.

The thing is, it’s sort of like never having enough time to do research and then voting to postpone everything all the time because you don’t have enough information.

You can tell everyone you are for transparency and accountability and yet vote no on paving, mowing and grants for the police department. Then you can tell everyone you are in favor of paving, mowing, and the police. Sometimes it begins to feel performative.

A Democratically aligned reader who is retired has more time for research than me. That reader shared the following from reputable sources. I don’t like the garbage tax either but:

According to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, 3,500 properties in Niagara Falls have real property tax exemptions, accounting for 45.30% of the city's total property value.

That means $633,500 that wouldn't be collected from untaxed properties if you eliminated the garbage tax. The $633,500 would need to come from somewhere.

The city’s assessment rolls, according to Niagara County tax assessment rolls, include 22,665 parcels.

At this point, the garbage tax is passed. I’m going to go outside and shake my fist at the new moon in the sky tonight.