Monday, March 02, 2009
Township Residents Double-Taxed For Fire Protection
If you live in fire districts for Pike, Lawrence, Wayne, Decatur, Perry or Franklin townships, you are being taxed twice for township fire protection and the fire protection for those covered by the Indianapolis Fire Department to the tune of more than $10 million a year according to the Star's Brendan O'Shaughnessy. The double taxation affects about 450,000 residents. This anomaly came about largely as a result of former Mayor Bart Peterson's 65% increase in the local option income tax, which allocates revenues to the IFD. That should be an impetus to those townships to merge with IFD. That's not how Sen. Mike Young sees it. "The city is taking our (township) taxpayers' money and then paying for the (city) fire department?" Young asked. "That's not right. I want that money back." Consolidation legislation which would merge the county's township fire departments into IFD has stalled in the Senate, where Young led the charge against the merger.
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6 comments:
Well, it's just making up for all the years "inside" Indianapolis residents were double taxed for IPD AND Marion County Sheriff "protection"... from 1972 through IMPD consolidation.
Good point.
I wish the townships (I live in one of them) would consolidate with IFD! There is NO REASON to have a undertrained and underexperienced volunteers (like my township) on the apparatus. IFD has a professional command organization, knows how to respond to any incident...and I want them in my township.
4u2c you may have just opened a can of worms
We certainly could use the money for the schools. It's time for the townships to merge the fire departments, lets put the politics aside and do the right thing. I would still like to see some local government on a small scale within the townships. Limit the budgets, pass and enforce some standard regulations on how the office is run and poor relief is administered. My problem with the townships is there is no oversight or enforceable rules or standards of law that they have to adhere to. Now if we could just get the city government and council to adopt the same creed we wouldn't have paid over 200 million more then the water company was worth with variable rate bonds hanging over our head at 9 1/2 percent interest. Lets not forget being in debt over 50 million for Lucas Oil and the problem with the Library Parking lot. Hmmm maybe well we are at it, we should look at our entire government structure in Indiana. We are not very far from being in the poor house thanks to decisions made by the large and small branches of government!
I wish the townships (I live in one of them) would consolidate with IFD! There is NO REASON to have a undertrained and underexperienced volunteers (like my township) on the apparatus. IFD has a professional command organization, knows how to respond to any incident...and I want them in my township.
You must live in Wayne Township. The worst trained and most arrogant (look at us, we're firemen. WORSHIP US!! WORSHIP US!!! WE ARE HEROES) firefighters in the state. I know, I live here as well
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