PTCC Archive
30 January 2007
Dear Friends,
A belated Happy New Year to you all!
The new legislative session is upon us and our first battle will be for the defeat of Act 1, the bogus school property tax “relief” bill passed by the legislature last year. Ten percent of the local school tax study commissions that were mandated by this law have returned “no recommendation” responses to their school boards after they discovered that this tax shift scheme has far more disadvantages than benefits for Pennsylvania taxpayers and, in many instances, will result in HIGHER taxes for the average homeowner. Many of the commissions that did offer a recommendation did so reluctantly and with comments advising taxpayers to defeat the recommendation in the May referendum.
The Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations has already started an informational campaign to defeat the tax shift referendum in the May primaries in the hope of sending a message to the legislature that this phony property tax “relief” plan is unacceptable and that school property tax ELIMINATION is the only satisfactory solution. You’ll be receiving more information in future PTCC updates about what you can do to help to defeat this law. In the meantime, PLEASE read this excellent newspaper piece from the January 17 issue of the Bucks County Intelligencer where Harrisburg correspondent Alison Hawkes fired the first salvo for us. Click here to read.
But now the primary reason for this update:
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** ACTION ITEM **
A former Washington lobbyist who is a PTCC subscriber has graciously offered a few suggestions to make our efforts more effective. I’ll be passing these along over the next few months but, for right now, I’m asking all of you to help with a very simple first step that he recommended.
He told me that having large numbers of supporters is extremely important when demanding legislative action, so it will help if we can expand the number of PTCC subscribers. Please forward this e-mail to two friends (or many more, if you wish!) with a short personal note encouraging them to subscribe to help our efforts for school property tax elimination. Ask them to visit the PTCC website for more information and to try the Act 1 calculator to see the oppressive effect of this legislation on their taxes. If each of you can bring just two more subscribers into the fold we can triple our membership overnight! Simply have them send an e-mail to pataxpayers@gmail.com to join. PLEASE help with this Action Item!
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As usual, your comments, concerns, and suggestions are always invited. Just send an e-mail to pataxpayers@gmail.com and we’ll give you a prompt response.
Thank you for all of your continuing support.
David Baldinger
PTCC Administrator