Tax tales only add to senior travails

When we moved to the Del Webb community Huntley, we were told taxes would be about $3,000 a year.

The tax bill just finished paying in September was $7,800.

Like many seniors in their 70s, I have paid for four generations of school buildings, student costs and teacher benefits. We need a break.

Some have already had to sell and move to lower tax areas, and some are going in the hole, hoping we can somehow make our legislators take another look at property tax breaks for seniors in age-restricted developments like Del Webb.

We produce no children for the system, but pay even more taxes than the children producing families in the surrounding area.

This is because we purchased something in addition to simple real estate and it was rolled into the price of the house. We own common areas, recreation centers and the ability to access services of people the community employs.

All this is taxed as real estate, and no amount of talking to the tax assessor gets them to do anything. They say their hands are tied by the law.

That brings us to the luxurious way the schools are built and the under-utilization of plants and equipment.

The schools should be run on, at very least, two shifts, starting at 6 a.m. with classes until noon, when another shift starts and goes to 6 p.m., with extra curricular activities only after 6 p.m.

Summer vacations should be only three weeks, with schools staying open and with staggered absences of students.

What industry could exist if they invested the amount we invest in schools and teachers and used that productive capacity only eight hours a day?

I suspect the teachers union-dominated system and executives who cave in to this powerful group, simply will never feel the pressure and never make schools efficient, as stockholders insist corporations do.

Taxpayers are really stockholders of the public school system. They are just not organized to throw out non-performing executives, and stand up to the powerful unions, as corporations are structured to do.

We need the press and politicians to find the guts to reorganize this system and bring it out of the 19th century and into the 21st.

Wilton Jere Tidwell

Huntley