I would like to see many more “scuffles” on the dais as too much “groupthink” and “groupspeak” has occured for far too long.

Oh yes….we have a new mayor and council members. I await the new 5 year plan to address all our ills and spread wokeness to the masses.

I almost forgot about this ceremonial drivel, as I have been overdosing on Ricky Gervais’ monologue. What a mug of smackdown that was. Any liberty loving American should order that entree, and from a Brit, no less.

Ok, back to Boise business. I heard that McClean is going to go into the trailer parks and search for vacancies to house homeless people. Not the worst idea in the world, but how will she qualify the tenants? There are homeless who are self functioning and those that are not. Where will the non self functioning homeless live? Is there a secret slush fund hiding somewhere that we can tap for this problem? There seemed to be one for the Crystal Palace Library idea.

Can we identify if any newly arrived homeless are transplants from DeBlasio’s NYC? Return to sender. Or….sue NYC for all boarding and care of their people until they get on their feet.

Is the Trolley dead? Are we still planning a commuter train from Boise to Nampa? Are we still going to pay more property taxes every year? Do we have adequate fire protection on the periphery? Are we in for more density housing? Dems need voting numbers and density will deliver it. It always has and always will. That’s been the plan from the start.

Off to a rocky, but a good start.

Hopefully the new mayor will address the issue of Boise taking the maximum hit on property taxes every year. As a small business owner its not government regulations that are killing us. It is this never stops increasing property tax burden that we have to either absorb or pass on in the form of price increases. With all the new development one would think the additional taxes generated would more than satisfy city greed.

For Boise, the property tax increase is mostly used to pay for increases to personnel, as stated by the City’s finance department (1/22/2019 budget workshop). Anyone can see this in the City budget on p. 40-41, where property tax and personnel costs have been in lock-step for years.

Rather than placing all of the blame and responsibility on the state to address property tax, the City can do their part by addressing the compounding cost of personnel, otherwise the City will continue to take the 3% increase each year. The City can start by adjusting the annual 3% COLA, as this may have been sustainable years ago with far less employees, but that is no longer the case. Move toward shared insurance premiums, as the rising cost of healthcare has no end in sight. The private sector began using this method to keep costs in line years ago. The city employees will not want these changes, but the citizens are constantly told that with growth comes change. Well than change needs to take place across the board.

EDITOR NOTE–Less advertising, incentives, and less expansion would tend to cut down on the need for more employees to serve the growth.

Editor Note: Exactly; stop the sprawl and this will lead to less demand on city staff as well as all other taxpayer funded resources. Meanwhile, the City could choose to provide property tax relief by not taking the 3% this next year and instead, using some of the tax they already collected, but are choosing to sit-on by keeping nearly $53 million set aside for the library in the rebudget system.

I am just waiting for all of this hope, change and prosperity that she promised during the campaign. With this kind of elaborate welcome one would think the Royal Family was there.