Ever wonder how bonds work or where the tax increment financing districts are in Lafayette Parish? The Lafayette chapter of the League of Women Voters recently produced an on-line guide to government in our parish.
“Know Your Local Governments: Power, Service, & Money. A Webguide to the Units of Government in Lafayette Parish” delineates everything from the structure of Lafayette Consolidated Government to who is responsible for collecting taxes and to what our tax dollars are dedicated. Information for the guide was culled from a wide range of sources including the 2009-2010 LCG budget, recent LCG financial reports, the Lafayette Home Rule Charter and the financial books of various agencies and offices under the LCG umbrella such as the tax assessor and Bayou Vermilion District.
Release of the webguide comes as Lafayette Parish, particularly the parish seat, takes a hard look at whether consolidated government is working to the best benefit of the various jurisdictions within the parish. The Lafayette Charter Commission has a little over a month to settle on a recommendation for future governance in the parish, which will go to a parishwide vote this fall. The parish is also set to redraw the political districts for the City-Parish Council and school board.
To view the LWV webguide to government in Lafayette Parish, click here.
Wait. Will these facts, placed in context, conflict with my ideologically tinged, willfully uninformed world view? Boo on the LWV! Thank the lord the local media's not screwing up this whole story with facts and context.
... written by Chicken Little , March 11, 2011 - 08:50 pm
TIFs a/k/a places to avoid unless you like paying taxes a/k/a user fees. According to Durel, taxes are user fees. The question is, who is getting used?
... written by Gaius Cilnius Maecenas , March 12, 2011 - 03:37 am
Generally those who pay the least in taxes, bitch the most about them! As slave labor is the blood of business, taxes are the blood of government. Social order demands both. Why we have religion---it promotes malice, cruelty & misery! This makes the slave labor of business tolerable!
It should not be forgotten we are primates---we only pretend we are human! The property of primaticity is well demonstrated by Nobody and Chicken Little above; I demonstrate facticity & historicity!
... written by ragin_cajun , March 12, 2011 - 04:00 pm
"As slave labor is the blood of business, taxes are the blood of government. Social order demands both." No. You actually demonstrate tyrrany and barbarism.
"It should not be forgotten we are primates" That's why you support tyrrany and barbarism...you place no value on human life. If you think that humans are just animals, you'll have no problem seeing them treated as such. Your worldview is exactly what creates hellish episodes in history like Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, Cuba, Laos, Mid East, South and Central America, etc, etc, etc....
... written by the original northsidian , March 12, 2011 - 07:27 pm
What the @#$% are ya'll talking about?
... written by ragin_cajun , March 14, 2011 - 09:17 pm
"As slave labor is the blood of business, taxes are the blood of government. Social order demands both. " That is a very clear statement of tyrrany. That clearly means that individual rights are to be disposed of whenever society deems it necessary to do so because order must be maintained. The poster even draws the very apt analogy between slave labor and taxes. He says that's OK, because "Social order demands both."
That is tyrrany and barbarism. Plain and simple.
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MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
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MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
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