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There is a "thing" chain stores are doing to screw the citizens of Wisconsin, particularly Walgreens, Target and Menards. They are making YOU pay their property taxes through a loophole. Seems this loophole they are exploiting says that their store, in a thriving location, should pay the same taxes as a building in a vacant lot or abandoned store. Instead of playing property tax like everyone else they can pay the property tax of an abandoned store.
So, if Menards owes $700,000 in taxes they can say - look, that big box abandoned store only pays $350,000, that is what we will pay putting the other $350,000 tax burden to the people in that community.
BUT WAIT - it gets better. They can have the community go back a year or two and we will be forced to refund the excess (in their view) of back taxes. Again, at the expense of you and me.
Small ma and pa places don't get this loophole. Only the large corporations get this break (the same ones the GOP is reducing taxes for). Well, Columbus and other city's are fighting back as there is a bill being proposed to fix this loophole and we are joining the fight.
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Another tricky situation is downtown. There are some apartments where the building owners are refusing to fix their back stairway, the ONLY way out of their building. In fact, the stairs LITERALLY have rotted and do not even touch the ground. (no really the supporting beams are no longer in contact with mother earth). Obviously this is a safety concern.
SO - what the heck do you do! Nothing? That is not a good plan. We tried to put pressure on the two dead beat out of town building owners, one has refused to acknowledge there is a problem and the other said he never received the multiple letters that were sent with the drop dead date of doing something.
So - the city could fix the stairs and put the $$ on their property tax but does the city want to get into the remodeling business? And if we do will it have to be 100% up to code costing 30K and we would probably never get that $$ back? Or we could evict the tenants but that is not fair to them and will be costly with court orders and so forth.
Plus - "we" would not be evicting the tenants anyway as this would fall on the building owners refusing to fix their problem. The building owners would have a choice, fix the stairs or lose their tenants. THEIR CHOICE, not OURS.
This can all be seen in City Council so there are no "secrets" that I'm giving out.
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Last night - about 1/2 inch of rain in the few storms we received. No tennis ball size hail like just west of Deforest.
Crummy weekend coming up. A lot rain and cool all day Saturday and High of 63 and cloudy Sunday. Thunderstorms Wednesday night and high of 58 Friday. 80s the next 2 days.
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Trump attended a the 36th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service a few days ago, a very solemn occasion to be sure. One of the first things he did was to clap and say this was just like one of his campaign rallies.
Seems rather disrespectful if you ask me.
He then promised to support police officers because they supported him “bigly, during his campaign that beat crooked Hillary.
He then congratulated himself for sacrificing his fake comb-over and not wearing a hat, before throwing the hat into the crowd – again behaving like he was at a rally and not at a memorial service.
What an ignorant child.
HEY - I have issues from time to time with the Police but I still respect them.
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OH - lesson learned, don't write a blog when REALLY snarly - tough week last week. Wednesday I learned a LGBT friend tried to commit suicide even though he had talked 4 LGBT individuals from the same fate. Seems the far right GOP is having an effect on the LGBT community by saying it's OK to hate them.
Then I get a call saying my lawnmower, that I have spend $350 on repairs in the last 3 years, will need $110 MORE repairs to fix the FRONT wheel and be in the shop for another 2 weeks.
I guarantee you I will not spend another dime on it. GREAT mower . . . when it's wheels are not falling off. So I'm looking for a BIG sale on lawnmowers so I'll have a back up when this one's wheels fall off again. $450 in repairs over 3 years? Geez - I could get a riding mower for that.
I must learn to not wear my emotions on my sleeve. I need to hide my emotions in a deep dark place where they can stew for a while (a few hours might actually do it).
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OH - I said we were look at rPods campers. Got a message from a former citizen of Columbus, a Doctor in Montana saying to look into Jayco Humming birds. Well, those are hard to find but upon further review they are built much better and really the same design inside, just better materials.
Now all we will need is an SUV (or car)that can pull 3500+ pounds such as a 2016 Porsche Panamera that can pull 4,500 pounds. All I gotta do is convince DJ this is the only car that can do it.
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| car pictured has no bumper hitch. |
