Cheryl, you state: “So for property tax to be abolished you would have to come up with a viable alternative to replace that loss of county revenue to cover those vital services.”
Disagree. The county govt will have to come up with the alternative. And I can assure you that your county will not come knocking on your or my door, beseaching us how they might find a LEGAL alternative to replacing said criminal revenue stream. They will simply do it, and it will not take long at all for them to inform you of their new ‘system’ – it will happen almost immediately. It is called “Plan B”, in any other scenario; and you can expect the same here.
Yearly property extortion is unconstitutional and should be stopped immediately. One does not justify an unconstitutional crime because it helps to fund a school, and you know that well. Not sure why you might argue for property taxes instead of brainstorming for constitutional alternatives, but you have every right to desire ‘no change’, to your current lifestyle. What you don’t have a right to, is demand that others who own property continually put up with a violation of their Constitutional protections under the 4th Amendment, simply because you want them to continue funding something out of their own annual incomes.
Having to quote the 4th Amendment over and over again for stubborn ‘county tax apologists’ is tiresome but will do it again here…
“The right of the people to be secure in their houses shall not be violated.”
It is neither your place nor mine to figure out how a county government might extract wealth from the American People without violating their right to live peacably, being secure in their homes. It is on the county govt to figure that out. COMMUNAL roads and schools have absolutely nothing to do with this unconstitutional violation of INDIVIDUAL rights that urgently needs correcting. We are neither a socialist state, nor a commun(al)-ist state – we are a Constitutional Republic, where the rights of the individual are the cornerstone of our system of government. Our Constitution made certain of that.