Recently the Missoula City Council proposed a new special district tax on certain areas around town to help fund their upcoming budget shortfall. The story is gaining ground as the protest provision is in effect right now. Just yesterday Mayor John Engen was on CNBC touting the special districts to help Missoula's budget, and in this http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_b3421fa4-ab4b-11df-a18f-001cc4c03286.html article there's more talk of how the tax-exempt properties in town will not be part of the special districts.
The issue is this - the special districts are not what they seem, they go to the general fund, so even though the name of them makes you think they're funding parks and streets, they certainly might not. The other argument is that it's just $12 or $13 now, but they're uncapped - and the intention is to use these to fully fund projects down the road. In cases across the US special districts usually climb higher than $500 a year, that's going from a dollar a month to over $41 per month.
In an age when our local government is hoping to support more affordable housing this will eventually be doing just the opposite. I'm very glad that the Missoula Organization of Realtors is opposing this district as it's written due to the future consequences that it could pose for the cost of home ownership, the fact that the City Council has not clearly defined where the funds will go, and that these special districts are uncapped.
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