Letters to the Editor

I'm OK paying property tax bill

Editor, the Journal,

Last year I purchased my first home, after over 15 years of renting and five years of saving. It hurt to pay nearly double the price the house sold for previously in 2017, but that pain is dulled by the facts that I can even afford to buy due to the circumstances afforded to me being a childless 30-something with marketable skills.

I recently got my first tax bill, and the assessor definitely paid attention to the sale price and adjusted my obligations accordingly. I could take the advice of my Realtor and try to nickel and dime the assessor in an attempt to re-negotiate the bill, but that seems like a lot of work to save a few hundred bucks. Plus, knowing that two-thirds of my property tax goes to the local public schools makes me eager to pay the bill.

You see, I spent nine years of my childhood education with the same cohort of a dozen other kids at a private Christian school in Arizona. Looking back, I wonder if our school had provided sex-ed maybe the three teenage parents (25% of the class) who came out of that cohort might have made better decisions when it came to protection. Now as an adult living in Mason County, I'm grateful that my neighbor's children have a place to learn about such things, and tuition-free to boot!

Can you imagine what the local kids might get up to if they didn't spend seven-odd hours a day learning things? Well, the ones whose parents couldn't afford private school.

I will conclude with an expression of gratitude to the editor of this paper for providing a forum to vent, gratitude to the educators who provide curriculum to our young neighbors for substandard wages, and gratitude to the taxpayers who contribute to the social welfare of our community, even if it pains them.

Davis Zanot, Mason County