Taxes are boring.

The onslaught of Sentinel articles about how awesome Donnelly is continues!

Today's entry is called Donnelly sets foreclosed home as backdrop for tax debate. It's really really fucking boring.

There's a dual tax rate in Fitchburg for homes and businesses, you see. And there's a shift thingy. Donnelly backs a 137 percent shift, while Wong supports a 136 percent shift! Oh my god! That's an incredibly huge difference!

To wit:

Under the 137 percent shift, the owner of a $219,934 house pays a yearly bill of $2,585. Under Wong's plan to shift 136 percent, the same resident's tax bill would increase by $5.18 a year.

Wait... five bucks???

I probably have five bucks in change in my couch! This is worth a press conference and newspaper article? Wow, what an important issue to the people in town!

Rest assured, people of Fitchburg, Tom Donnelly wants to make sure you can afford that extra pack of cigarettes!

Donnelly said even though it is a small shift, any increase on residential property taxes is difficult for residents to swallow.

"I would keep taxes low to help homeowners in these hard times," Donnelly said

Thank you Tom! My five bucks will be well-spent on booze! It's actually very easy to swallow that way.

The business benefits Wong sees are similarly pretty minor...

Shifting to a 136 percent classification rate, as Wong supports, would save commercial businesses an average of $41.94 on a lot worth $332,085 and would save a $643,025 industrial lot owner $81.22.

Yay! That's like one or two printer cartridges! Go business go!

Really, I couldn't care less about all this. I wouldn't even have made this post except for this one bizarre statement in the article...

Donnelly said he is not opposed to shifting the tax rate toward a single-tax rate, but said now is not the time.

"You make changes in good times, not bad," Donnelly said.

Huh?

Tom, during good times it generally makes sense to keep things going the way they are (or change them for the better). During bad times is exactly the right time to make changes!

Also, what the fuck, Sentinel?

Every couple of days Donnelly says something totally insignificant and the Sentinel slobbers all over him like a two-dollar whore. Every article begins with "Donnelly blah blah blah." Every story presents his dumbass statements as something important and relegates Wong to a rebuttal role. It's getting to be really annoying.

It's not like I ever expected the Sentinel to back Wong. Or to be anything but totally biased against her, actually. But it's just getting ridiculous.

On the bright side, nobody in town actually gives a shit what the Sentinel has to say. So there's that.