Paul Wheeler's IBJ letter to the editor takes on conventional thinking and calls for an "uncommon departure" to fix property tax crisis

Letter to the editor IBJ re: property tax-Mike Hick’s article


No reasonable person can give this article a pass.


Claiming the repeal of property taxes is ‘too bad, because that would be an uncommon departure’ from our wisdom is precisely why we need thinking outside the cocoon of moving numbers around in a failed and broken system. His three reasons: “inequitable, unstable and inefficient” is exactly why our current system, including most proposals bandied about by the Governor and legislators, are symptomatic of a larger problem stemming from the horse and buggy days, compounded by mismanagement and overspending.



Sounding like another special interest, ISTA or school boards, who claim without stability of taxing people’s homes, they can’t survive, he should ask those who have their property for sale about the economics of surviving. Nothing is mentioned about privatizing snow removal and other services, or the ‘inefficient’ and expensive method that got us into this fix. Nothing is mentioned how to correct the economically devastating and morally reprehensible practice of government intrusion into one’s home by the annual threat of seizure and foreclosure for failing to pay into an unfair system, leaving abandoned homes to druggies who peddle their flesh and drugs, turning areas into an economic blight.


It’s about time we had some ‘uncommon departure’ to permanently fix this problem. There won’t be businesses here without people to run them.



Submitted by: Paul Wheeler

Indy resident.