Keeping the Heat On
It's late July but before you know it, the leaves will start changing color and the roads will turn white again. It seems a little odd for me to be writing about winter as I sit here in a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and sandals, but even football teams start prepping for the Super Bowl in the summer. That brings me to the topic of this column, home heating oil.
At a recent meeting of the Orleans County Legislature, Shelby resident Eugene Outterson made a valid point about home heating fuel. The state and county does not add sales tax to food items, presumably because food is a necessity. Anybody who lives in this area can attest to the fact that heating your home or apartment in the middle of winter is as much a necessity as eating.
We all know what has happened to the cost of gas, and even if the price at the pump begins to slowly fall, many of our counties citizens who live on a fixed income have already spent a larger portion of their income on gasoline and thus any relief would go a long way.
A few months ago when a concerned citizen brought up the concept of a sales tax abatement on gasoline at a county legislature meeting, there were members who spent a great deal of energy explaining why they could not suspend the tax. The reasons varied from "we can't afford to lose the revenue" to "consumers will not see the savings."
Now it is time to start thinking about other forms of tax relief, especially on a vital item such as home heating fuel. I am in good company, earlier this month Senator George Maziarz told local and county government officials to "be prepared in our counties for a catastrophe." The projected increase in home heating fuel puts citizens at risk if they lower their thermostats too low to save money, or use riskier alternative methods to heat their homes. Granted, a four percent sales tax break is not the entire solution to the problem, but it shows a commitment on the part of the county government to address the issue, and the savings to consumers in all income brackets amounts to hundreds of dollars.
One of the arguments against the suspension of the sales tax is that the "lost" revenue will have to be made up elsewhere, possibly in the form of higher property taxes. I would argue that it is our money in the first place, not the county governments by right. If you combine the added sales tax revenue with the huge increase in property taxes, our taxes have increased by leaps and bounds.
I also think it is safe to assume that most of us are lucky if we got a cost-of-living wage increase this year, and thus are forced to live within our means even though we have less expendable income. For some reason our county officials expect us to get by with less money and yet do not feel as though they should follow that rule. In other words, we are forced to cut back on expenditures and the county government should do the same.
The best way to keep our heat on is to keep putting theheat on our county government, maybe then they will warm up to our calls for relief.
At a recent meeting of the Orleans County Legislature, Shelby resident Eugene Outterson made a valid point about home heating fuel. The state and county does not add sales tax to food items, presumably because food is a necessity. Anybody who lives in this area can attest to the fact that heating your home or apartment in the middle of winter is as much a necessity as eating.
We all know what has happened to the cost of gas, and even if the price at the pump begins to slowly fall, many of our counties citizens who live on a fixed income have already spent a larger portion of their income on gasoline and thus any relief would go a long way.
A few months ago when a concerned citizen brought up the concept of a sales tax abatement on gasoline at a county legislature meeting, there were members who spent a great deal of energy explaining why they could not suspend the tax. The reasons varied from "we can't afford to lose the revenue" to "consumers will not see the savings."
Now it is time to start thinking about other forms of tax relief, especially on a vital item such as home heating fuel. I am in good company, earlier this month Senator George Maziarz told local and county government officials to "be prepared in our counties for a catastrophe." The projected increase in home heating fuel puts citizens at risk if they lower their thermostats too low to save money, or use riskier alternative methods to heat their homes. Granted, a four percent sales tax break is not the entire solution to the problem, but it shows a commitment on the part of the county government to address the issue, and the savings to consumers in all income brackets amounts to hundreds of dollars.
One of the arguments against the suspension of the sales tax is that the "lost" revenue will have to be made up elsewhere, possibly in the form of higher property taxes. I would argue that it is our money in the first place, not the county governments by right. If you combine the added sales tax revenue with the huge increase in property taxes, our taxes have increased by leaps and bounds.
I also think it is safe to assume that most of us are lucky if we got a cost-of-living wage increase this year, and thus are forced to live within our means even though we have less expendable income. For some reason our county officials expect us to get by with less money and yet do not feel as though they should follow that rule. In other words, we are forced to cut back on expenditures and the county government should do the same.
The best way to keep our heat on is to keep putting theheat on our county government, maybe then they will warm up to our calls for relief.
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