JCC Prop 13 in CA under attack. Again.

I don't normally post here. My ideas tend to be unpopular.
So there's a group claiming to be a grass-roots organization that wants to remove Commercial property from Prop13. Seems they think that's a good idea.
A lot of people who don't understand why Prop13 was enacted regard it as evil.
So, here's my rant on the subject.
History: during a time of rampant inflation and a stagnant economy ("stagflation"?), property taxes in California were on the rise. Every year, the assessor would come by, and assess the value of property, and raise property TAXES accordingly. Result: people were taxed out of their homes. Homes that had been in the family for generations had to be sold, because the government said "this is worth five times what it was last year, so your taxes are being adjusted accordingly." PEOPLE WERE BEING TAXED OUT OF THEIR HOMES.
The politicians in the state capitol were working on it. They said.
The people had enough. They got together and drafted Proposition 13, with rolled back taxes and Froze them. So long as the same person owned the land, taxes on it could not be raised unless there were significant improvements. Prop13 coverage extended to inheritors, but ended if the land was sold or reparcelled. Enough signatures were on the petition to have Prop 13 put on the ballot. It won.
This gutted the state budget. Governor Brown, in vengeance for having all of his pet projects stripped of funding, funded his pets by stripping the CA Education budget. (We are still paying for that debacle to this day.) Politicians in Sacramento hate the law because the people went around them and solved the problem without them.
Newcomers regard Prop13 with hate, probably because they feel that since the property taxes have to come from somewhere, they are getting stiffed. Why should they have to pay more?

Prop13 is one of the most hated laws on the books outside Roe-v-Wade.

It is, admittedly, flawed. It was written by ordinary people rather than lawyers. And it included no prevision for expansion.

Many large corporations are still paying the same property taxes today that they did back when the law was passed, because they still own the land their buildings were on.
This is the stated target of the attack. Why should these great big companies get this break?
What it utterly FAILS to consider is the small commercial land owners. You know, the people who own maybe one building? Maybe a strip-mall or something? A small business or shop? Suddenly they would be facing a massive increase in their tax bills. Enough to drive them to bankruptcy or force them to sell. Small businesses being forced to close, and family land once again being taxed out of the family's ability to pay. And even if they do pass the extra taxes onto their renters, those businesses would be forced to cover the cost by charging more.
And the big businesses that are supposedly the target of this campaign? Oh, they might be inconvenienced, but then again, they can afford to pass the extra cost onto the customers.

My solution is different:
Do not attack prop 13. Do not attempt to curtail or destroy it. Bolster it. Expand it. In my view, what should happen is that Prop 13 should be expanded to EVERYONE who owns land for more than 15 years. After 15 years, your property taxes get set to whatever the lowest rate way during that 15 years, and frozen there under the same conditions as everyone else.

 

WHAT I CANT' READ TEXTS THAT BIG WHAT

 

cali --> death spiral

 

You should probably send this to the state legislature, because the last time I read the California Constitution it didn't have anything in it regarding the JCC being a deliberative or legislative body. Of course, given our Proposition process this may have changed.

On a more serious note, your solution is intriguing but it seems like it might be regressive on homeowners. Why not make it by a cap on a company's networth?

 

God damn, that is like precisely the right combination of font size, font style, and passage length to make my eyes glaze over and not read the post. We should harness this powerful mixture and figure out a way to weaponize it.

I mean... was this an intentional stylistic decision or just a copy-paste gone horribly wrong? In any case please, please make use of the plain text editor.

And in the interests of being vaguely on topic: lol California.

 

I tend to resize my browser to 1000px wide because full width layouts are terrible for text. Eyes do not like to track over a--wait. What is this. This is broken.

 

Why, so it is. Oh Xenforo, you're so full of... ... eccentricities.

 

Also: "xenForoSkin"

 

So sorry. Used the text editor here. It kept changing no matter what I did. Bouncing all over the place. When last I looked, it was fine. Now it changed again.
I will attempt place this at a better size, and if I'm in the wrong place, please redirect.
So far, only one person seems to have had anything useful to say. Why not base it on a cap vs size of company? Because size is not the issue. Size is the distraction. And suppose you did set it for X-size. X-size might be something today, and something completely different in 10 years. Remember when Huey Long said there was absolutely no reason why anyone should have more than a million dollars? That was a fortune in 1920. Only a few 100 people in the US had that much. Now? Less than a thousand? I have no idea. But a significantly greater portion. And laws work best when kept simple. If you put in a cap, it will have to be adjusted again and again and again.

OP:
So there's a group claiming to be a grass-roots organization that wants to remove Commercial property from Prop13. Seems they think that's a good idea.
A lot of people who don't understand why Prop13 was enacted regard it as evil.
So, here's my rant on the subject.
History: during a time of rampant inflation and a stagnant economy ("stagflation"?), property taxes in California were on the rise. Every year, the assessor would come by, and assess the value of property, and raise property TAXES accordingly. Result: people were taxed out of their homes. Homes that had been in the family for generations had to be sold, because the government said "this is worth five times what it was last year, so your taxes are being adjusted accordingly." PEOPLE WERE BEING TAXED OUT OF THEIR HOMES.
The politicians in the state capitol were working on it. They said.
The people had enough. They got together and drafted Proposition 13, with rolled back taxes and Froze them. So long as the same person owned the land, taxes on it could not be raised unless there were significant improvements. Prop13 coverage extended to inheritors, but ended if the land was sold or reparcelled. Enough signatures were on the petition to have Prop 13 put on the ballot. It won.
This gutted the state budget. Governor Brown, in vengeance for having all of his pet projects stripped of funding, funded his pets by stripping the CA Education budget. (We are still paying for that debacle to this day.) Politicians in Sacramento hate the law because the people went around them and solved the problem without them.
Newcomers regard Prop13 with hate, probably because they feel that since the property taxes have to come from somewhere, they are getting stiffed. Why should they have to pay more?

Prop13 is one of the most hated laws on the books outside Roe-v-Wade.

It is, admittedly, flawed. It was written by ordinary people rather than lawyers. And it included no prevision for expansion.

Many large corporations are still paying the same property taxes today that they did back when the law was passed, because they still own the land their buildings were on.
This is the stated target of the attack. Why should these great big companies get this break?
What it utterly FAILS to consider is the small commercial land owners. You know, the people who own maybe one building? Maybe a strip-mall or something? A small business or shop? Suddenly they would be facing a massive increase in their tax bills. Enough to drive them to bankruptcy or force them to sell. Small businesses being forced to close, and family land once again being taxed out of the family's ability to pay. And even if they do pass the extra taxes onto their renters, those businesses would be forced to cover the cost by charging more.
And the big businesses that are supposedly the target of this campaign? Oh, they might be inconvenienced, but then again, they can afford to pass the extra cost onto the customers.

My solution is different:
Do not attack prop 13. Do not attempt to curtail or destroy it. Bolster it. Expand it. In my view, what should happen is that Prop 13 should be expanded to EVERYONE who owns land for more than 15 years. After 15 years, your property taxes get set to whatever the lowest rate way during that 15 years, and frozen there under the same conditions as everyone else.

 

In your giant wall of nonsense, you forgot to link to the part where it is supposedly under attack.

 

That solution doesn't make any sense. Why would you freeze taxes at the lowest point in 15 years. If the real estate market bottomed out, and all property was clearly valued below its actual worth, why would it make sense to tax them at that level for another 15 years? Wouldn't that just distort the market even more?

 

Bigot? WTF did that come from?

Did you read the first sentence? That's the attack.

Solution makes perfect sense. Prop 13 was designed to protect people from being taxed out of their homes and other property. Expanding as suggested would allow newer families to enjoy the benefits.
And, in my diseased mind, maybe limiting their budget would get the politicians to stop wasting as much money. Yeah, right.

 

The text was so large that my eyes exploded and blood spurted all over the keyboard, and my fingers got stuck on it, and I wrecked the keyboard.
Damn you.

 

Oh, yeah. So by mentioning a problem that I and three of my friends had run into with three other groups, in an attempt at a serious discussion, I was the racist ass. Yeah, that makes sense. Way to stay on topic there.

And if you look, I reposted the text at a better size.

Wow, not I remember why I left these boards the first time.

 

No, saying racist **** makes you racist.

 

Wow, board logic does not resemble real logic in any way, does it.

Thank you for your derail and reminder. Lesson learned.

 

Whether the property taxes are really high makes little difference to myself and friends my age in CA because we can't get decent-paying jobs to allow us to buy houses in the first place

 

Now I see why your views aren't popular elsewhere. By the way, you and your three friends doesn't make your perception a reality. Unless you're a Republican, then game on.