Gary gets to screw taxpayers for one more year

The Indiana Department of Local Government Finance has spoken. The City of Gary gets to screw taxpayers for one more year.

Actually, the compromise that they came up with is pretty interesting.

First of all, they applied the tax caps in full to Gary taxpayers on the portion of their bills going to Gary schools, the sanitary district, and Lake County.

They let the City itself charge more than the caps. For example, homesteads will pay 2% of their assessed value in taxes to the city instead of 1.5% that everyone else gets this year.

I guess that this is making the best of a bad situation. The only saving grace for taxpayers is that this is a one year adjustment, and they get the full tax cap next year.

I made a bet with a buddy that Gary will be under 50k population in the next Census. This compromise just gives people more reason to leave (if they can).

Considering that in '06, before the subprime crisis hit, 25% of all Gary real estate was abandoned, I think that I'm a lock to win this bet.