My town voted 87% for Crooked and 75% for Xiden, but local positions have a decent 3rd-party representation. An R next to your name is a death sentence.
If I get to know this 3rd party, and it's not some rebranded socialist/commie nonsense, should I actually run for council? The council has a 2-term limit, so seats open up every election.
The town has clear signs of corruption. Property tax here is 5.25%, the highest in a very expensive county. There's no way we're spending that much money legitimately...it has to be going somewhere it's not supposed to. Town council lives way better than the average resident.
Half of me wants to stay here for a while. The actual people aren't bad, just poor. My house is 110 years old and has a kickass layout for a 2-fam. I even have just enough space to add a 2-car driveway if I want to. The only shitty part are the schools, where my options are between a public shithole and a muslim academy...so I'd need to pay private tuition if we don't move before the kids hit kindergarten age.
But I'm not going to lay down roots just to have a corrupt local govt drain my pockets.
The other half of me wants to fix the remaining bits of deferred maintenance and fuck off to the Carolinas. Used to be SC was my dream state, but Graham 2.0 was a lie, so I'll have to settle for NC.
What do you guys think?
Small towns and cities can be amazingly corrupt, because nobody pays attention to the budget. You might do a whole lot of good. You'd have to be patient, and learn a little bit of accounting. If you're willing to do that, I say go for it.
Everything resolves to the budget. Everything.
The budget's not actually too ridiculous. $6.8MM of appropriations for a town of less than 6000 residents at the 2010 census. There's not a lot of space for additional people so we can use 6000 as a fair ceiling.
Biggest thing that made me 0_o was $2.3MM on police salaries. I back the blue as much as anyone, but dude wtf.