Karen E. Fawbush, Minot

Well, well, well, here we go again! Big surprise! Now there is another entity plus a “special” committee that wants to put their hands in our pockets.

The Minot School Board and yet another town committee is looking for $125 million from just the property owners in town and I use the word owners loosely as we never actually own our home, business and land because the city holds it for ransom every year. Oh, they don’t call it ransom, it goes under the word ‘taxes.’

The state legislators upped the income for the Homestead Act and we were thrilled as we would now qualify for a tax break. We have to really budget just to make a trip to Fargo to see our youngest son and his family because of the price of gas on top of the ever-raising prices of everything else in this town. We figured with the Homestead Act we would maybe save $500 a year. Well, what a coincidence, that’s about the same amount the school bond would add to our taxes so in other words they want to take away what the state gave us to help out the seniors.

I’m not saying we don’t need more schools. What I would like to know is this there has been millions upon millions of dollars spent on housing and businesses in this town. The increase in children didn’t come because they moved here on their own, their parents are here buying houses, and there has been a bevy of new businesses built.

Where are all the new taxes that these properties should be paying? If any of the new building going on in this town is still getting a three- to five-year tax break, it has to stop! I am sick and tired of picking up the tab for someone else. We have not had any children in the school system since our youngest graduated in 1985, yet our portion of school tax keeps going up.

You need to figure out a more fair way of getting what you want because the way this town is going, this will not be the end of someone wanting to raise taxes. The county finally figured out that if they wanted a new building they had to lay off the property owners and get everyone involved with paying. I suggest the School Board do the same.

And another thing, look at the date they picked for a special election Dec. 10. By that time a lot of seniors will be gone for the winter and if it’s a stormy day the seniors won’t want to go out. Now how is that for being on the up and up?

I am sure by now you can tell I will be voting ‘no’ on the school bond issue and I hope most everyone else will do the same because this is a very unfair tax.