Dear Source:
Instead of fighting back and forth about native rights as associated with property taxes. Why doesn't the constitutional congress just scrap property taxes all together in favor of other form of revenue such as income, sales and value added taxes. Property taxing is an archaic form of taxing. It is inherently unfair to longterm i.e. "native" property owners who through no fault of their own see their property values increase because someone just bought the house next door for a thousand times what their family paid for theirs a hundred years ago.
It also lags behind market values of houses that with the market, as we've seen lately, can greatly depreciate. It is also labor intensive for the government to continuously update their assessments. Their are much fairer ways to tax people. If they want to keep the property tax system they can also look into the way California taxes its property. It takes into consideration long time owners thereby not hurting older people that might be on fixed incomes.
Gerard Kalemba
Schenectady, N.Y.
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