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Is the city embezzling tax money?

$582,000 was collected from Marshalltown property taxpayers and earmarked specifically for 911 emergency services. Now the city is desperate for money because of a mismanaged budget and wants to use that tax levy for its own use. That appears like embezzlement.

Instead of just removing the $582,000 tax levy from the city coffers after the newly formed 911 commission starts collecting that money on their own, city officials believe that all citizens of Marshalltown are so wealthy that they should just pay $580,000 more so they can use it for special interest groups like the Iowa River Trails, or wealthy business developers that don’t want to spend their own money, or some of their many so called “programs” that only benefit a few. We have more taxpayer-supported programs in Marshalltown than we have citizens to pay for them.

The new mayor and city officials will attempt to make you believe that because they will be losing “backfill” money from the state of Iowa, that forcing you to pay more property taxes to fill that gap should be perfectly acceptable to everyone. While they should just simply offset the budget by reducing special interest spending and program spending that does not benefit the majority of all of Marshalltown taxpayers. There are many programs in Marshalltown that should be privately funded, not taxpayer funded as they do not benefit the majority of all taxpayers. But our elected officials are more sympathetic to private interest groups and wealthy developer friends than they are to common citizens.

And to top it all off, now our public library wants millions more after we built them a brand new facility 10 years ago and just recently gave them $204,000 more each year to be open on Sundays.

Meantime, for many of you, that broken-down street in front of your house that you’ve been waiting to get repaired for 30 years with your tax money, well it is likely you may die before it ever gets done thanks to the overextended TIF program and the cost of these special interest groups and programs.

I guarantee you that city leaders will try to find any loophole or use any excuse what so ever to keep that $582,000 tax levy on the books. I simply call it embezzlement! City officials need to stop the bleeding of its taxpayers and live within the current taxes collected or resign if they can’t do so.

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