It is alive! Belleville Township rises to tax again

Like a horror movie in which you think the monster is dead, only to see it rise again and again, Belleville Township is still alive and will devour another $343,400 in property taxes before it goes.

Why are they levying for any property taxes at all? Why do they still exist?

We are coming up on 100 days since the township board directed their attorney to draft an ordinance to dissolve the township. We’re still waiting on what must be a Tolstoy-esque writing effort.

Trustees also agreed to work half as hard, cutting meetings to once a month so there are even fewer opportunities to ask them why they still exist or vote on that purloined ordinance.

Then Trustee Joy Schreiber in defending a higher property tax levy drops this tidbit: “I think the $300,000 that Mr. Hagberg was proposing is doable but at the same time I want to have a little bit of comfort in knowing that if we do dissolve, we have enough to pay off any contracts.”

If we do dissolve?!?!?!? Shouldn’t it be when?

Not to mention, who said taxpayers dollars are intended to provide comfort, especially when town trustees overtaxed residents so much that they are sitting on a pot of $660,000.

Trustees shouldn’t be feeling proud of cutting the levy to $343,400 this year. Last year’s grotesque collection of $448,000 yielded only $83,798 in aid to the poor — the township’s only discernible function.

That is, unless you count providing jobs for politicians and life support for a relic of government.

This story was originally published December 5, 2015 at 1:00 PM with the headline "It is alive! Belleville Township rises to tax again."