They need $7,500 per resident and, according to the article, they intend to raise that money over three years. I don’t know what their property values are like but if I assume an average house price of $300k, a current tax rate of 2%, and three people per house then they’re currently getting $6,000 in property taxes per person over three years (which they need to spend on other things) and so an enormous tax increase really is necessary.
(I’m neglecting non-residential property tax payers. A tiny town like this probably doesn’t have many.)
And there’s not really any guarantee that they’re going to stop charging that money after the three years has passed because people will be used to paying it at that point.
That aside, can you imagine having to pay an extra $200 a month for your mortgage for at least three years to cover over the fact that people that work for your city sexually assaulted other people?
I don’t know the details of the case but I expect that almost everyone who works for the city is as opposed to sexual assault as any normal person is. The mistake of the city government as a whole was having so little insurance - just one million dollars. I had 500k in liability for my house and I’m only one guy.
Your back of the envelope math is good, but small towns usually have very low property values due to not being super desirable places to live (and declining populations) a realistic average would be 100k average home value. Some will be smaller, older houses and only worth around 25-50k, some will be much newer houses built in this century worth closer to 200-300k but most will be older homes that people continue to live in and maintain worth around 100k
He did manage to fuck just about everyone in the end…
Elect Republicans, get pedos.
Embrace moderates, get Republicans.
We here in Kansas City are voting today to potentially recall our county executive over massively inflated property taxes.
This seems to be happening all over the place.
This specifically is literally a town of 800 still owing 6 million dollars after they spent their little coffers and their insurance paid out what it was going to pay. They are literally taxing the home owners exactly what it cost to pay the settlement I doubt that is happening all over the place.
This particular situation is a little more extreme, but you’d be wrong. Homeowners are seeing their property taxes raised by criminal percentages nationwide. Thankfully most are fighting back.
What you actually mean is that the housing market is hot dumping a bunch of unearned wealth on every asshole who bought a house in the last 50 years meaning that with the extra wealth you get to pay additional taxes.
Fuck you for shitting on people who own a house to live in.
Fuck you for shifting the blame away from corporate house flippers and other people who buy houses as investments instead of as a fucking place to live.
Fuck you in general for implying that economically forcing people out of their homes because some rich fucks want them is the fault of the homeowners.
Asking people to pay a share of their unearned wealth the same as all of us have to pay out of our earned wealth is totally shitting on them…
there is no wealth there. What do you not understand about NOT having to cave to the salivating infinite greed of the “market”? If the homeowner actualizes that opportunity then fuck them too and tax that sale all you want. A system that lets you buy a house and then slap a subscription on top with government eviction hanging over your head if you ever fall behind should not exist.
Tax income. Tax barter. Tax churches.
Don’t tax food, water, or shelter.
Certain things are paid for by the municipality or county and incur costs to same. People. The people that use those resources like schools roads fire safety EMS etc can play all sorts of games about where they “officially” live but they can’t hide the actual house that their big fat butt sits in so it makes sense to tax that.
What you are saying is that its OK to tax someone who barely makes enough to live by taxing their income but if bob has 2M in property we shouldn’t tax THAT. Do you know how much income tax we should have to charge to make up for that? It’s a LOT and 95% of the benefit will accrue to those who are in the top 10% of wealth whilst much of the cost will be put on those in the folks on the lower rungs.
Shall we also forego taxing the 7 - 75th investment property?.
Can we maybe admit that having put $20,000 into a house that is now worth 2M isn’t a terrible problem to have and that grandpa is still the winner even with taxes?
Sure thing.
Thank you for your opinion. I hope you have a nice Wednesday.
This mfer not knowing how municipality finances work…
Fight back against corporate greed making every part of your life more expensive, including your cities and counties work and maintenance projects, which requires them to raise taxes to stay solvent.
I know how they are supposed to work, sure.
But here in KC people saw 100% to 150% increases, which was so ludicrous that the state tax commission stepped in and capped increases. We also just voted to recall our county executive who defended the assessments
And our scenario is not unique. It’s happening everywhere in this country.
Even though there is a legal process for tax assessment, that doesn’t mean it isn’t abused or corrupted. Also doesn’t make it okay for the county to levy unfair taxes to homeowners.
It really depends how you define unfair, and the context surrounding it.
Is it unfair because there is corruption and misuse of tax dollars? In which case, yeah that’s a pretty big problem and people need to be removed and even go to jail.
Is it unfair because your municipality is about to go bankrupt? No not really because you don’t have a choice at that point. The failures that brought this about should probably result in the removal of people regardless.
Unfortunately, many municipalities in the US are going bankrupt largely because of corporate greed and the negligence of those counties from pushing back against it. Making this a pretty widespread problem as you have also noticed.
Things like:
- lower tax rates for large corporate entities who are affecting/clearing out local business.
- Money leaving the community because money spent at large corporate owned businesses does not cycle back through the local economy. Which reduces the viability of the local economy and local businesses which reduces municipal tax income, without reducing the municipal financial burden.
- Classic parking lot sprawl that often brings in low tax revenue and has extremely high municipality maintenance costs…etc)
- corporations reaping local natural resources but not having hefty taxes levied against them so that the community benefits from it
- …etc
Ultimately, this has its roots back in corporate greed and corporate consolidation.
Theirs a case for some form of malpractice on the part of that town
their liability insurance paid $1 million
wtf, for an entire town, including schools? This is no longer the nineteenth century. It’s not all that unusual for individuals to have that much liability insurance. It’s not even that expensive
Yep under insured and bad people in charge ignoring all the raping for years
I don’t think Frank White was raising taxes for sex abuse tho right? Probably just all those police lawsuits. -_-
Probably, but the bigger point here is that it’s a tactic being used across the country for various reasons.
This is why comprehensive, single payer public health (and education, infrastructure, police de-escalation and oversight, jobs, transportation, food, and and and) are an investment with incalculable ROI. This is why “render to Caesar.”
I’d bet many members of this community ignored, dismissed and even helped cover up these abuses because that’s what little conservative communities do: ignore and enable sexual assault because they can’t admit that it’s happening, and they’ll sacrifice their vulnerable community members to keep up appearances for as long as possible.
they definitely are, on reddit last decade i saw one , where they basically ignored the accuser confronting the pedophile of the church(pastor) in public.
The former coach and alleged abuser
… then goes on to document a guilty plea and some horrific detail, I think at this point “alleged” is a bit
Journalistic habit. You’re supposed to say alleged until the sentence but afterwards you’re just used to the phrasing.
He raped 14 girls and it states he was allowed to do this for years and is only receiving 15 years in prison.
Soo… counts fingers about one per year?
The amount set a new record for abuse cases against school districts in Oklahoma, topping a $5-million settlement reached by Kingfisher Public Schools in 2023. […] the district paid $500,000 from the school’s general fund toward the settlement, while their liability insurance paid $1 million.
Sounds like they were under-insured. The Catholic Church got away with it by having their insurance pay everything, and then declaring bankruptcy whenever someone went against the Church’s actual assets.
Ah yes the holy loophole.
Which is such bullshit because I remember reading in the early 2000s that the Catholic Church had over $4 trillion in assets, they could afford to settle all of their claims for a fraction of that, a very small fraction of that, less than 1% of that.
The thing that pisses me off is that, back in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s, the Church became aware they had a sex abuse problem and could be held liable. And instead of mocking the priests to places where they couldn’t commit harm, they:
-
Increased their movement of assets away from individual churches and dioceses info separate ownership, so those assets wouldn’t be forfeit in case of lawsuits;
-
Purged a bunch of documentation about abusive priests, shredding, burning, or throwing it away;
-
Moved the documentation that remained to secret local archives supposedly sealed by the confessional and clerical privilege, and then away from local churches and dioceses to the Papal Nunciature (Embassy) in DC where they’re covered by diplomatic immunity;
-
Went out and bought a massive amount of specific insurance to cover any sex abuse claims that might arise - and got a very cheap price for it, too.
-
Continued their practice of moving abusive priests between dioceses and parishes, denying there was a problem to anyone who might ask and giving those priests the opportunity to give other victims.
Probably other shitty stuff, but those are the points I remember offhand (and it’s more than enough). They never cared about their victims, only preserving their money and power.
JPII was a pedo. I have no proof but I feel very comfortable making that assertion.
Over a thousand years of experience in legal maneuvering, they existed before the laws and watched them form over the years.
They’ve got the asset strategy down pat, what they’ve never had a handle on is their human factors - since we’re all such flawed and sinful individuals, and they have a tendency to recruit from the damaged end of society to start with… denial is their weapon of choice against the Devil.
Never mind Citizens United; the fact that corporate entities (and yes, churches count) are able to do shit like this just proves that they’ve been out of control going way further back.
Limited liability, as a concept, is a moral hazard. It should be abolished in all but a very limited set of circumstances where it serves the public’s (not the shareholders’ or any other private entity’s) interest.
-
You don’t get $4T in assets by giving it away to every altar boy who tattles…
We should take it all away from that pedophile ring. Why do they deserve to have tax free rape dens?
There are no Epstein files.
Er, I mean, it’s a hoax.
That is, only Epstein is in the Epstein files.
Signed, Epstein’s mom.
Only $1,000,000 in coverage which isn’t much.
Religion is bankrupt
How does a school property tax increase just happen without it being voted on and passed by the community?
Because they voted to elect these people as representatives and do it for them.
This is a case of FAFO: the school system took on huge liability (in payment of the judgement) and the school system is funded by property taxes.
Also the city was clearly woefully underinsured with only $1m liability coverage. Most cities should have 10-100x that these days
I get that, but every time the school district in my area wants more money it gets voted on for a property tax increase.
Those would be optional, before the expense, votes for the choice to spend the money or not.
This is a case of necessity, they’ll be in violation of various laws and judgement decrees if they don’t raise the money.
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how funding for schools works.
The school says to the city, “I need more money because properties are getting more expensive here” and the city bills the residents? Where does federal funding come in? Why do the residents pay for this?
It is highly dependent on local, state, and federal funding sources, usually in that order. Property taxes are usually where most of the money comes from in most places, but that is not universally true. For example, in Colorado property taxes are not as much of a direct source of funding for schools as they are in other places. So despite having some of the most expensive property values in the country, Colorado has some of the worst funded schools and worst paid teachers in the country as well.
I live in one of the highest property value areas anywhere in the entire country, and the local district’s primary source of funding is municipal sales taxes. It’s truly absurd.
At the state level, many states use lottery money from any given area to supplement other funding. Which sounds great on its face, but the reality is that the lotto is effectively a regressive tax of sorts. Areas that have high property values save money from lotto contributions. Areas with low property values tend to have more people playing the lotto, but that money is rarely enough to make up for a lack of funding. What most people dont understand about those programs is that they dont take the lotto money from rich areas (or pool it) and provide it to poorer area schools that need it more. The money is geographically limited to the areas it comes in from
I live in one of the highest property value areas anywhere in the entire country, and the local district’s primary source of funding is municipal sales taxes. It’s truly absurd.
Why is this absurd?
Sales taxes are regressive by design, and are ultimately a way to fuck over poor neighborhoods if you drop it to the municipal level.
The only time sales taxes tend to serve the local citizens well is when there’s a large tourist or traveler population and even then it usually mostly goes to making sure their required infrastructure isn’t a burden because if it’s too high then they just don’t spend money.
Why is @ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 's experience of local schools being funded sales taxes absurd?
Because when it exists in wealthy districts it not only primarily serves to makes sure none of the filthy poors in other districts benefit from their taxes, it’s even targeted within the district, as the middle and lower class residents will be using public schools and the truly wealthy will be sending their kids to private schools and demanding a tax credit for doing it, even if the local area is funding it with the sales taxes they don’t even pay into.
Plus it’s just a self defeating tax scheme in the first place. You don’t want to discourage local spending or encourage people traveling to other areas to avoid it.
… are you @ToastedRavioli@midwest.social ???
Because when every property is worth millions of dollars, and even a parking space goes for half a million, the school could easily be funded using property tax well beyond what it even needs.
Instead, the school never has enough money to fund education. Teachers get paid below national averages. Test scores are below state and national averages. And then the school district asks for more money by placing the burden on everyday working class people just buying food or whatever (who dont own property worth millions of dollars) and tourists (who can be discouraged from visiting under increasing taxation) to primarily educate the children of the people who own property worth millions of dollars.
If you dont find that absurd then I dont know what to tell you
No I do, I just came in with limited understanding, appreciate your response
Federal funding is just a drop in the bucket compart to local and state taxes that support public schools. 30 billion from the Fed to 13000 districts would be only 2 mil before accounting for federal staff to audit and distribute. And for a school 2 mill is only about 10-25 staff depending on district.
The military gets a cool Trillion a year.
When they don’t misplace it.
is “30 billion from the fed” the amount they are currently getting? and is it every year?
what is that compared to? ie. how much does a school get from local residents?
Some coach diddles kids and the families and kids have to pay for it through insane tax hikes and less school funding? In what world does that make sense?
They already put the coach in prison for 15 years and probation for 25 years after that. Why punish the local community too? Yes, the families should be made whole, but not at the expense of objectively innocent tax payers and schoolchildren.
In a community that’s small, there is no way many of these same families and homeowners weren’t aware of that predator.
The community enabled him and now the community has to pay for that choice.
What’s your alternative solution?
That’s a very judgmental take… you have insider knowledge or are talking you arse out? Man I wish that kind of shit never happen in my village because I’d be bundled with other peasants I might have seen at the baker for a brief 30 seconds while fetching bread once over 8 years and suddenly I would be enabling someone…
The four officials — the former principal of Ninnekah High School, a former superintendent, a former athletics director and a former secretary — were dismissed from the lawsuit as part of the settlement.
^Word of Akins’ relationship with Jane Doe No. 2 began to spread in the school district. Multiple adults and former students told authorities district staff were aware of the rumors but brushed it off, according to law enforcement reports.
I currently live in OK, Ninnekah is a tiny shithole in the middle of nowhere with like 700 people in it. If more than a couple of adults knew about it, the whole town knew about it.
I do not think any elected official would go around telling any member of their constituency that they diddles their kids. Not even Trump, nor his appointed cabinet. I don’t see how the town would know about it if the adults do not tell others.
It says “former”. I take that to mean the people did hold the officials accountable after finding out.
do not think any elected official would go around telling any member of their constituency that they diddles their kids
How do you think the elected officials found out? Do you think that the kids or the coach told these officials and no one else?
I do not think any elected official would go around telling any member of their constituency that they diddles their kids. Not even Trump, nor his appointed cabinet. I don’t see how the town would know about it if the adults do not tell others.
Then you are probably unaware of how proud pedophiles often are of their behavior, how much they like to find and even team up with others of the same tastes, how any iota of self-awareness they possess that might stop them from bragging is generally rendered irrelevant by both their arrogance and mountainous sense of entitlement, how much everyone who actually knows what is going on has a strong disinterest in interfering, and how much non-pedophiles do NOT want to believe or acknowledge even the possibility of the truth of such statements even when they hear or overhear it directly for themselves.
From Jerry Sandusky to Jeffrey Epstein, it’s the same story, over and over again.
In other words, these people talk, sometimes in lightly coded language but often not even bothering, because they do not believe they are in the wrong, they do not believe they will be caught, they think they have every right to do what they do, they like feeling invincible, and if you are the one person who actually has enough of a problem with it to make a stink out of all the countless others who are silently in the know, they’re sure no one will believe you. . . because if someone cares to ask, there’s nothing they can’t talk their way out of. Far too frequently, they are 100% right on all counts.
EDITED to add link that demonstrates the significant number of people that heard, saw, or knew and did nothing, or worse, quietly stood in the way of anyone who wanted to do anything about it, including making the police files go away from the first victim who reported: https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/08/14/lawsuit-alleges-ronald-gene-akins-preyed-on-former-basketball-players/8122541002/
Al Capone is the most well-known gangster. His status as a public figure when he was active is not representative of the publicity gangsters go for at all. In fact, he was that well-known only because of how unusual it was for a gangster to seek such publicity. I don’t see reason to suspect anything different about pedophiles.
a very judgmental take
This is a very judgement based situation. Schools I attended in the 1970s left single adults alone with kids in all kinds of situations that make this kind of abuse possible. Changing how they operate, making less private spaces available for abuse on school campuses to occur in, placing less trust in the individuals and relying on larger groups to ensure that behavioral norms are followed… all those are things that should have been happening 50 years ago, but apparently didn’t in this small town. Maybe now they will, or maybe they’ll just bury their heads in the sand until the next case comes along and slaps them with another tax hike.
“…the alleged abuses were allowed to continue for years…”
If you’ve lived in a small town than you know that word of this was in many households that stayed silent.
That’s just how small rural towns in America work on issues of abuse.
If you believe this was a completely contained secret, then I have a bridge to sell you.
But yes, many people who are completely innocent will be impacted. What’s your alternative solution?
many people who are completely innocent will be impacted.
And motivated to make changes for the better, as opposed to ignoring the problems.
“I don’t do politics”
That may be, but politics does you - whether you let it or not.
I’ve lived in a village of 600 people for about 6 years and I don’t know anyone here, and don’t want to.
How do you get food, or electricity, or water? If you’re willing to deal with the humans for that stuff, then you need to deal with their society.
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Here’s the full quote:
Not only has the case caused outrage among the community, who discovered that the alleged abuses were allowed to continue for years, but it is now going to weigh financially on their shoulders.
It’s clearly saying that the community did not know about the abuses and that the administration was allowing the abuses to continue for years.
Just asserting they know without citing evidence or precedent like a witch hunt is not enough to convince me. Keeping up appearances with outsiders is how these predators survive.
Another commenter already provided a good answer dealing with that issue.
thanks, replied below
Thanks for bringing the whole quote. It’s sad that we are seeing the above behaviour / selective quoting here on the fediverse.
Boo fucking hoo.
The citizens voted for an abuse-enabling school board that hired the abuse-enabling administration, so they deserve what they get.
Don’t like it? Fucking vet your political representatives better!
New York’s 3rd is one of the nation’s most wealthy and educated districts. They elected George Santos.
It could happen to you.
How could you vet that your representative without any history of doing so would commit or allow sexual abuse?
I would have my town buy >$1M of liability insurance. Then the insurance company has a financial incentive to prevent malfeasance with audits and safety requirements. The incidents would be less frequent, and their cost more spread out over time. The average New Yorker didn’t even notice the difference in taxes.
It’s never guaranteed, admittedly. But given which party people in rural Oklahoma, of all places, likely support, and given that party’s pervasive, to the last man support for pedophiles, I think there are some pretty fucking obvious changes they could make to start off with. Don’t you agree?
Edit: and if you don’t believe me about the “pervasive, to the last man support for pedophiles” part, Ted Cruz just confirmed it. Holy fucking shit.
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The families that sued him and settled for $7.5M were from the community. Did they enable him? What about the children that attend the same school and will now have less funding for their education? Did they enable him? Do they deserve to partake in the punishment?
Make the people that did the offense pay for it.
So your proposal is to completely scrap how American liability laws work and create something new?
I don’t think that would be all bad, definitely ambitious.
What about the the current victims? How should they receive their restitution in the meantime?
What if he could never make that much in his entire life?
That’s pretty common. You garnish their salary, sell off assets, and recover what you can.
That’s the way the System supposed to work though. The local school district is supposed to be run by those citizens. They elect the school boards that set the policies and appoint the administrators. It’s supposed to be representative government. The citizens are supposed to monitor what this board is doing and if they don’t like it vote them out. Make their voices heard. Show up at school board meetings. That’s their responsibility. If they don’t want to do it then they have to live with the consequences.
The school was likely complicit in ignoring warnings. This is why board members should be held personally liable if they are negligent in their duties.
Wouldn’t that increase the financial barrier of running for office?
It would give them a financial incentive to do their job.
Obviously, but I’m concerned about the unintended consequences of preventing poor people from holding office.
Just more to the pile of the unintended consequences of capitalism.
How are we supposed to abolish capitalism if poor people can’t afford to run for office?
Only if you plan to be negligent. It might filter out the ones that are in it for the money, rather than the responsibility.
Historically that’s been the opposite - if they accept bribes, then they can afford to hold office.
In what world does that make sense?
OK logic. I have to admit: school districts in the state would more likely ignore other potential problems without this kind of example being set. God knows that sending one offender to jail doesn’t deter future offenders, it only heightens the thrill…
It’s very tough. We’re not the only school district in Oklahoma that has faced this, and certainly none of the Ninnekah residents affected this situation
Yeah, we can tell no one affected it. That’s how dozens of victims stacked up over decades with no one doing anything about it. A predator doesn’t rape that many children without people knowing. None of those people cared until it might cost them money
I’m not a fan of the US lawsuit culture, but it seems money is the only thing Americans truly care about
There’s no seeming about it.
It’s what we were bred, raised, taught, and enforced to care about. Even the church goers because those adapted to the culture as well.
Trying to break that mold is… full of resistance. There’s a class of people that have become aware of this, prefer it, and act to maintain this system.
If you argue it with any of these smalltown dinks, they’ll tell you it’s just the liberals molesting kids anyway, so the solution is to get rid of democrats. There is no amount of stats or math or logic that will sway this.
Oh I can attest to that. I used to have to convince people to not live in the sewage surfacing from their septic systems, or draining directly out of their RVs.
I can say from that experience: financial incentives were overwhelmingly the most effective and responsive tool. More than appeals to personal or public health, even.
There’s no seeming about it.
Wonder how many complaints were ignored before he actually got charged. Probably would have been much cheaper to act the first time, before he had dozens of victims for them to compensate.
This 2021 article paints a damning picture.
Oklahoma coach preyed on players while school looked the other way, lawsuit alleges — The Oklahoman
Back in the bad old days of the 2009 recession, I got caught in the churn and wound up at a temp agency to make ends meet.
One of my assignments was driving about 6 hours a day, from gas station to gas station to “buy” cigarettes. I never actually bought anything. What I did do, however, was wait until they asked me for either my ID or money. If they asked me for ID, they got a green card. If they asked me for money with no sign of ID’ing me, they got a red card.
It was a voluntary program by Philip Morris to curtail underage smoking. I don’t know what actually happened to the cashiers. I was told no one got punished. (And folks reacted with disappointment, but not sadness or anger. Folks with green cards reacted happily, though. So I assume it was an Incentive-based program.) These interactions got logged, and I turned in the log sheet at the end of the day.Because we’re victims of our own experience, that immediately came to mind. I feel like we need to start blindly testing if mandatory reporters are reporting things they witness. I mean - no idea how that gets worked out. Seems horrible.
Sounds about right. How many more victims were abused between 2015 and the charges being filed? Everyone who refused to take the first victim seriously should go to jail for enabling him.
At this point I’d move across county lines to somewhere nearby that won’t have double the property tax rate.
You’d have to find someone to buy your house, which will probably be difficult, seeing as there’s a massive property tax increase heading that way.
Great point
Burn it down then.
While arson and insurance fraud to save $7,500 over 3 years, may not sound reasonable…
It’d be pretty hilarious and they should do it.
This headline is shit. It’s just a masked type of victim blaming. What actually happened is that many town employees must have known about the SA, considering there were 14+ victims and SA doesn’t happen overnight, and they did nothing for quite some time… So the real story is that the town faces a huge tax hike because its employees decided to cover up SA.
If they’d caught the shady bastard after the first or second assault, the legal bills would have been millions of dollars less. But they didn’t, because it wasn’t a priority.
As for who knew or should have known but did nothing, we don’t know, but the town residents might want to dig into that.
might need to be even more reductive or more expansive, but remember: somebody will twist this for clicks
Like most problems, this one is also solved by wealth redistribution from the billionaire class to regular people.
Every dollar that the local government should have had to pay that settlement is sitting in some offshore account, it makes more sense to pick a random billionaire and force them to pay out than it does to increase property taxes on people who live in their homes.
Billionaires don’t live in their community and has no say in the local operations of their community. The purpose of a lawsuit is to 1) compensate victims, and 2) Discourage repeating the situation
Akins raped at least a dozen different children over more than a decade. That doesn’t happen without other people knowing about it, but they stayed silent. He received a rather lenient 15 year sentence. Without some additional punitive measure, it’ll just happen again. Townspeople didn’t seem to complain when he was raping children, but now they’re complaining that it’ll cost them money
At least now they’ll properly deal with sexual predators rather than ignoring the issue
Doesn’t change the fact that instead of robbing a random billionaire to pay for it because they can, they are robbing their residents who aren’t billionaires and can’t pay for it.
