At 11 a.m. today, professional initiative promoter Tim Eyman of Mukilteo plans to file his 2009 proposal in the Capitol office of the Office of the Secretary of State.
He’s calling it the Lower Property Taxes Initiative. In e-mails sent Friday and Sunday, he claims it will “drastically” reduce property tax payments.
Here’s what he wrote:
The Lower Property Taxes Initiative requires that each government receive the same total amount of money they collected the previous year – plus the rate of inflation. If during a year any government receives money in excess of this revenue cap, THAT EXTRA REVENUE WILL NOT GO TOWARD MAKING THAT GOVERNMENT BIGGER, IT’LL GO TOWARD MAKING OUR PROPERTY TAX BILLS SMALLER.
How much will our initiative lower your property tax bill? Some years, it’ll knock 40% off your property tax bill. Other years, it’ll cut it by 1/3. Other years, it’ll lower it by 25%. Other years, it’ll reduce it 10%. The amount of reduction will be different every year. The greater the excess revenue collected by the government, the larger the property tax reduction that year.
Voters in November defeated Eyman’s Initiative 985 to open up carpool lanes and spend millions of sales tax dollars on road projects rather than education, health care, social services and public safety.
For the record, there were 47 initiatives filed in 2008 so you can bet more ideas will be coming forth.
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