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FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE CONTACT:
George Davey
www.PolkJustice.com Des Moines, IA - Keeping young Iowans from leaving Iowa involves two key components, increasing wages, and lowering taxes. With this in mind, we should strive to bring more high paying companies to Iowa and we should not let taxes go any higher. Iowa is already in the upper 50 percentile in overall tax burden and in the lowest 20 percentile of wages earned. Proponents of the courthouse want to build it with a big tax increase but if we wait until some of the existing bonds are paid off, we can build it without increasing taxes. It is all about timing and planning. Make sure we keep our graduates in Iowa and keep Iowa in the top 10 best places to live. The tax increase impact studies always ignore the high taxes you are already paying and instead focus on the smaller amount, the increase you would be required to pay in the future. This distorts any reasonable perception of the high taxes we pay now. Taxes never go back down, so the smartest thing to do is not to raise them any higher. We want to see Iowa out perform other states in growth and prosperity and that starts with keeping Iowa a great place to live, not by raising taxes. The lawyers have talked their talk and now we must all sit back and make the decision on how to vote on this 8 story $212 Million project (with interest). Just remember that we are in uncertain economic times. There was not a big fan fair over a new courthouse when Polk County assumed the $340 Million in debt with interest over the past several years. You remember, the $205 Million dollar Events Center without a vote, the $70 Million jail with a proposal that did not include guards, and lastly the recent $57 Million upgrade of the County owned casino. If a courthouse emergency existed, it sure was not in the headlines. There simply is no courthouse emergency and the rats and moisture can be solved with another modest improvement similar to the $1M courthouse upgrade done in 1998. There are many reasons to be skeptical as we have demonstrated confusing ballots, math mistakes on impact figures, past mistakes with the jailhouse, and the broken promises. Please get out and vote on April 29th 2008 so we can have a good turnout and feel good about the decision whatever it may turn out to be.
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