On one of Jak’s public-appearance-for-his-adoring-elementary-school-fans last week (a.k.a. taking the dog w/ on a mailbox run), I was pleasently surprised to find the spring/summer edition of Beach (The Magazine Of Virginia Beach) stuffed amongst the usual bills and junk mail.
I’m a big fan of Beach and all. It gives behind-the-scene peeks on current city happenings, like the Town Center project, as well as info on future projects, like connecting Elbow Road to Dam Neck Road (which will shave 10 minutes off of my morning commute). Granted, all of this information is publicly available from other sources — I just happen to think that it’s slick to have it arrive in magazine form, complete with pretty pictures. 
Earlier this month, Va Beach had an election for mayor and a few city council seats. I’ve always been a fan of our mayor, Meyeeeerraaa Oberndorf. Not that I know anything about her or her politics, but it just seems that her record speaks for itself. “Virginia Beach ranked number 4 in the list of best city government’s in the United States, tied for third as the best managed city, and was named the most livable big city for women.” is a typical example of Virginia Beach in the press.
In the weeks leading up to the election, I was very surprised to see some local-channel 30-second commercials from someone running against Meyera. The commerial would start with a black-and-white “woe is me” testimonial from a Va Beach resident, whose first name would flash up in big, bold white letters. The resident would proclaim something to the effect of “My taxes are too high. I can’t afford to live in this city anymore. This city gov’t is so irresponsible.” Then a big yellow smiley-faced ball would bounce across the screen (hello Wal-Mart copyright lawyers, are you reading this?) and the scene would fade to a still-shot of Robert Dean (the candidate), sitting on a pier at the beach, who promised to “Roll back taxes” if elected.
This piqued my curiosity as to how bad the taxes in Va Beach really were, so naturally — I did nothing. The information about taxes was surely out there, but I never made the time to look it up. However, since Mr. Dean’s commercials never mentioned anything specific about the taxes, I always felt something was fishy.
Back to the recently arrived Beach magazine, page 25 shows a very nice breakdown of where the city’s tax dollars come from, and how the are spent. What caught my eye was the “How the cities compare…” insert, which lists how much local taxes the average family of four pays annually:
Suffolk: $2294.50
Virginia Beach: $2518.74
Chesapeake: $2611.19
Hampton: $2836.10
Newport News: $2842.88
Norfolk: $3015.30
Portsmouth: $3177.16
Meyera won the election — barely. After seeing the above insert, it makes me very mad at Robert Dean. Virginia Beach is SECOND only to Suffolk for having the lowest taxes? Virginia Beach tied for third as one of the best managed cities in the ENTIRE UNITED STATES? Where’s the problem? Sure, everyone would love to have lower taxes, but I think it’s very irresponsible to run a campaign on the platform that you’re going to roll back taxes, because that implies that there’s a problem with the current taxes.
I think that I’m misplacing my frustration, however. It shouldn’t be at the candidate running on what I consider is a bogus platform — it should be at the citizens for voting for that candidate without doing proper research, like what would happen to the city and its services if the budget income was decreased. They don’t care, … they just hear “roll back taxes”, which means more money for them, so that’s how they vote.
So I didn’t vote. And after thinking about it, that makes me feel just as stupid about myself as I do about the folks who voted for lower taxes just “because”.