The Weirdness of News
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- April
- 16
This is barely noteworthy, I realize. But I wonder if anyone else noticed a strange coincidence in the news last week.
First, radio-TV personality Don Imus got fired after uttering the phrase, “nappy-headed hos.”
And then the one famous person in the world you could actually call a “Ho” without risk of retaliation died at the age of 76—That was the Hawaiian crooner, Don Ho.
Ho Ho.
This entry was posted
on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 11:44 am by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
Taxes once again are going up 5% in the city of Yonkers. What a surprise! How interesting it was for Mayor Amicone to pick yesterday of all days to make the announcement. I guess Mayor Amicone’s thinking is that no one is really going to be paying attention with the distraction of students being massacred and homeowners rowing away from their houses.
Death by a thousand little cuts. The politicians of this state continue to be short sighted in their view when it comes to taxes. The city raises their taxes, and then the county raises taxes, and everyone who is anyone raises the taxes. It’s only five per cent. Let’s not forget, last year it was only two per cent. We did you a favor last year -we were going to raise it by three per cent. You should be grateful.
Let me give you an inkling as to how this affects one homeowner. I bought this house 6 years ago. Two years ago, we had to refinance to get our mortgage payment back down to a reasonable amount due to taxes. In six years, our monthly payment had grown beyond our budget because of taxes. The cost of the refinancing? We lost out on four years principal gains on our mortgage.
We bought in Westchester because we wanted to be close to our aging parents and our siblings. One of our siblings has sold his house in Yorktown to relocate to North Carolina. I foresee the same in my future. I cannot see me staying in this house for the next 25 years. The taxes eventually will be as much as my mortgage payment.
I would be curious if you could give a summation in your column of the various tax hikes by all of the county, state, and city agencies that have affected Yonkers homeowners since 2001. It should be quite a number.
Thanks.
Don’t forget, Con Ed is jacking rates by 20% now, and when Indian Point goes away, Linda Puglisi predicts 70% to 100% tax rises upcounty, and your ISO-brokered power rates will do a quick “Enron Shuffle” to astronomical heights without the old nuclear love-hate object providing local stability. Only rich guys like Reisman & Spano will be able to afford it. (And newly arrived Bagla Deshi families, living eight to a room).