The assessed value is set by the state and differs from the home's market value. If adopted, the proposed budgetary increase already results in a tax jump of around $413 for every $100,000 in a home's assessed value. While all council members backed the city's Trust Fund, two council members sought to increase funding for the program and were willing to divert revenue from other programs to pay for it, including the city's existing shelter programs and neighborhood security. It’s as simple as that.MISSOULA - While Missoula County hasn't yet unveiled its new budget, frustrations over the City of Missoula's Fiscal Year '23 budget ran high on Monday with its proposed tax increase of more than 11.6%.īut most of the argument focused not on the increase to property owners, but on the city's subsidized Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And once the safety net goes – whether it’s in regard to healthcare, gun violence, housing, mental health, climate change, or even just having a functioning democracy- it’s a long, long drop to rock bottom. I’ve seen the consequences first-hand of what the inability of politicians, of our government, to act to protect our own people looks like, be it from Nazis, pandemics, or policy failure.
Because I’ve seen how close we’ve come to the edge. It was an obvious dress rehearsal for something much more serious and presented a lesson that we almost all learned – that even bumbling, Keystone Cop Nazis can take an entire country down if people don’t take them seriously. More people than I was screaming about the danger more people did a lot more work than I did to keep our community safe.Īll I know is that when I watched the events of January 6th, 2021, it became clear that not enough had been done to try and make people learn from what happened in our community. I don’t know if they didn’t believe me, didn’t want to believe me, or both.Īnd, just as we warned, they came. Politicians patted me on the head, including some who most of you know and regard very well. The weeks before Unite the Right felt like watching a runaway train barrel towards you in slow motion, unable to get out of the way or do anything but watch it loom closer and closer.īut it wasn’t enough. I showed people chat transcripts and forwarded emails. I was an incredibly minor part of our community’s response to the Nazis showing up, but I stymied whatever I could. No, literally – looking for people to maim and murder. I can only imagine how much more fun we’ll have now, especially in the wake of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, with the entire alt-right up and looking for blood. Back in 2017, after I wrote the article linked above, we had someone leave a voicemail on our campaign phone, where someone said the name of one of my kids’ school and teacher, and then hung up. These people aren’t the “forgive and forget” kind of folks. This is something I haven’t admitted aloud at any point over the last five years, because, as anyone who keeps tabs on these groups know, they are more than willing to go after or kill anyone who they see as a threat. I should know – I personally got some of those permits and reservations canceled. This group is coming from Georgia and has booked a “family reunion” in Nelson County.
This group is coming from Texas and is staying at this campground in Louisa County. We took a risk, leaking information from people we had quietly observing their planning forums. Causing mayhem and destruction was their stated goal. So many of us who’d worked on the ground organizing against the alt right and Nazis (although that Venn Diagram is almost a circle) that came to Charlottesville understood what was likely to happen. One of the things that sticks with me is how loudly so many of us screamed warnings about what was coming. And then she picked herself back up and went back in for another twelve-hour shift immediately after. She held everything together she is why we were able to handle that day. And when I shut my eyes, I can still watch our charge nurse – my wife – on our fifth wedding anniversary working tirelessly by my side in the ER together. I can still remember the helpless look in the eyes of a family member searching for their loved one, desperate for any information on someone who was unaccounted for.
#We hold the line full#
But I can still see the first ambulance flying around the street corner near our ER, followed by four or five cars driven by bystanders and good Samaritans, all full of patients. We keep careening from crisis to crisis, pandemic to pandemic, which makes time pass both agonizingly slowly and at incredible speed. It’s been five years since I wrote about the aftermath of the Unite the Right attack on Charlottesville, Virginia, that left Heather Heyer dead and dozens more injured.
0 kommentar(er)
