The Gov­ern­ment's im­po­si­tion of sub­stan­tial­ly high­er prop­er­ty tax­es on home­own­ers in its 2010 bud­get is pro­duc­ing a tor­rent of heat­ed com­ments from sev­er­al quar­ters of our di­verse so­ci­ety. As the Guardian re­port­ed, the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to rake in $1 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly from this mea­sure. The tax is un­doubt­ed­ly re­gres­sive as wealthy home­own­ers and land­lords will have to dig much deep­er in their pock­ets.

I do agree that the sys­tem is an­ti­quat­ed. Gone are the days when a home­own­er would have paid the Gov­ern­ment $50-$100 an­nu­al­ly on a?prop­er­ty val­ued about $300,000. How­ev­er, the?Gov­ern­ment?must take in­to ac­count?the cur­rent de­pressed state of the econ­o­my and its neg­a­tive im­pact on peo­ple with fixed in­comes, pen­sion­ers and mort­gage hold­ers.?

For ex­am­ple, a home­own­er now pay­ing a $3,000 month­ly mort­gage has the State's val­u­a­tors?as­sess his month­ly rental val­ue to be $5,000 month­ly. This works out to an an­nu­al val­ue of $60,000. Three per cent of this sum is $1,800 year­ly or $150 month­ly. In one shot the mort­gage pay­ment is ef­fec­tive­ly $3,150 month­ly, plus al­ready in­creased elec­tric­i­ty rates.?

This ex­am­ple is the low­er end of the brack­et. In up­scale ar­eas,?one can cal­cu­late a month­ly rental val­ue of $20,000 and add that to a month­ly mort­gage pay­ment of $5,000. On a more sig­nif­i­cant note, pay­ment of prop­er­ty tax­es must be com­men­su­rate with reg­u­lar and re­li­able ser­vices of wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, garbage dis­pos­al etc.

About two weeks ago, I spent five and half hours in the Barataria/San Juan of­fice of the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Joseph Ross,?to tell him di­rect­ly that the wa­ter?sup­ply?in the El So­cor­ro area?has been de­te­ri­o­rat­ing over the last three months.?

Al­most every?sin­gle day the taps are dry from?evening to morn­ing.

I note that the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St Ann's East and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter An­tho­ny Roberts has made a clar­i­on call to WASA to "do some­thing im­me­di­ate­ly to al­le­vi­ate the pain and suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple of up­per and low­er San­ta Cruz."

Home­own­ers may feel very ag­griev­ed to pay?in­creased prop­er­ty tax­es?in ar­eas where peren­ni­al flood­ing and its con­se­quent dam­age place a se­vere fi­nan­cial bur­den on their shoul­ders. I ex­pect the State to pro­vide prac­ti­cal and ob­jec­tive so­lu­tions to this con­tentious is­sue. As Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln once stat­ed, "No?man is good enough to gov­ern an­oth­er man with­out that