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Why Your Town Sucks #3: Waukee

Waukee was more of a Tallon, Skyler, and Hunter town when the growth explosion started. No offense to Little Emma.

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Wasn't there a school embezzlement scandal in the Waukee school district a couple of years ago? Would have been a nice addtion.

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ClonesFTW said:
Just in the last 5 years we've probably doubled the amount of stop lights it feels like.
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The one by Autozone is the worst. Totally out of sync with the light on Alice's RD. If one hits you with a red light, they both will.

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dmclone said:
A lot less. As an example, in Phoenix a million dollar house pays similar property taxes as a 300k house in Polk county. Everyone talks about how expensive property taxes are in Texas, because they don't have income taxes. Property taxes in Dallas are similar to those in Polk county. But the good news is that they will go down now that sales taxes are also high....oh wait, that "discount" is already factored into those examples.
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Maybe the communities in the metro should start taxing Facebook, Google, and Amazon instead of constantly jacking up property taxes on working people. It's total horse$hit!
 
alarson said:
... the railroad made them change it from Shirley to Waukee, and (iirc) they just wanted an indian sounding name for whatever reason.
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Makes sense. Nobody was intimidated by the Shirley Warriors.

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dmclone said:
A lot less. As an example, in Phoenix a million dollar house pays similar property taxes as a 300k house in Polk county. Everyone talks about how expensive property taxes are in Texas, because they don't have income taxes. Property taxes in Dallas are similar to those in Polk county. But the good news is that they will go down now that sales taxes are also high....oh wait, that "discount" is already factored into those examples.
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The tax thing is just a bit of a pet peeve to me working in the public sector. When you say our taxes should be lower, what you're saying is that you want less services. Yet you never hear anyone say they want less fire fighters. No one ever says don't fix that pot hole. In fact everyone wants the municipal system to be perfect but they are never willing to pay for it.

A resident in the Waukee example pays $385 a month. First, that $385 gets split between schools, county, and the City. So the City is probably like a $125 a month, and for that they get on demand emergency management service, their roads get repaired, they enjoy nice parks and other City amenities and more. All things that people want and its infinitely frustrating when people just throw out that the tax is too high.

I can't comment specifically on the way Phoenix or Dallas work, but I guarantee you the cost to the provide the service isn't less, so they're making that up somewhere else that's probably not as evident as the base property tax.

In the end, the City budget isn't a mystery. You can go and look at what the City is spending their general fund dollars on. If you don't like what taxes you're paying, go look at those budget documents and think through what the City shouldn't be doing. I guarantee there is very little wiggle room to substantially make a difference to your annual bill.
 
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EnhancedFujita said:
The tax thing is just a bit of a pet peeve to me working in the public sector. When you say our taxes should be lower, what you're saying is that you want less services. Yet you never hear anyone say they want less fire fighters. No one ever says don't fix that pot hole. In fact everyone wants the municipal system to be perfect but they are never willing to pay for it.

A resident in the Waukee example pays $385 a month. First, that $385 gets split between schools, county, and the City. So the City is probably like a $125 a month, and for that they get on demand emergency management service, their roads get repaired, they enjoy nice parks and other City amenities and more. All things that people want and its infinitely frustrating when people just throw out that the tax is too high.

I can't comment specifically on the way Phoenix or Dallas work, but I guarantee you the cost to the provide the service isn't less, so they're making that up somewhere else that's probably not as evident as the base property tax.

In the end, the City budget isn't a mystery. You can go and look at what the City is spending their general fund dollars on. If you don't like what taxes you're paying, go look at those budget documents and think through what the City shouldn't be doing. I guarantee there is very little wiggle room to substantially make a difference to your annual bill.
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Polk County having 5 supervisors (regardless of party) making $150,000 each with full benefits and ipers is a bit of a sham.

The YMCA investment seems a bit questionable too.

i agree with some of what you say however.
 
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I promise you nowhere is as bad as Boone....trust me. Okay maybe Dirty Dodge and Council Tucky have us beat out but Boone is pretty bad
 
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alarson said:
As i remember from my waukee history class in like 5th grade, the railroad made them change it from Shirley to Waukee, and (iirc) they just wanted an indian sounding name for whatever reason.
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Fine, I'll get this one. Shirley, you can't be serious?
 
EnhancedFujita said:
The tax thing is just a bit of a pet peeve to me working in the public sector. When you say our taxes should be lower, what you're saying is that you want less services. Yet you never hear anyone say they want less fire fighters. No one ever says don't fix that pot hole. In fact everyone wants the municipal system to be perfect but they are never willing to pay for
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Don't get so upset, what some people consider waste, others may consider it necessary. I'm not going to study what the Waukee budget is because I don't live there and I don't give a single ****. I'll take Johnston as an example. Did we need a multi million dollar football field? Do the cops need to make 90k a year? Do the cops need to drive brand new 60k SUV's? Do we need a diversity director at Johnston high school? Do we need an ice rink? Why am I paying for DART when it should pay for itself? In today's world, could we ditch the library? I'm not saying that some of these things are not nice-to-haves but there is plenty of waste that has nothing to do with fire fighters coming to save the day.
 
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dmclone said:
Wow, I was about ready to call you out and then looked it up. I didn't realize Waukee was so cheap compared to other metro areas. Still way too high but

300k house
Waukee $4,620
Des Moines $5,910
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Even Norwalk is extremely high right now and that message I had sarcasm a bit. I looked at a new build and was $9800 taxes…I passed. Crazy stuff
 
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dmclone said:
Don't get so upset, what some people consider waste, others may consider it necessary. I'm not going to study what the Waukee budget is because I don't live there and I don't give a single ****. I'll take Johnston as an example. Did we need a multi million dollar football field? Do the cops need to make 90k a year? Do the cops need to drive brand new 60k SUV's? Do we need a diversity director at Johnston high school? Do we need an ice rink? Why am I paying for DART when it should pay for itself? In today's world, could we ditch the library? I'm not saying that some of these things are not nice-to-haves but there is plenty of waste that has nothing to do with fire fighters coming to save the day.
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The services in Johnston are pretty impressive having just moved here this summer. But yea, you can tell they are certainly not hurting for money.
 
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