Lufter Quits As WTL Leader
Wigderson is reporting that Chris Lufter has decided to step down as the head of the Waukesha Taxpayers League. Chris was a commenter at the Chronicle, taking time out of her day several times a year to explain to me what was more important, the tax rate or the tax levy, because I’d always forget what she’d told me. I think it’s the rate. Right?
The WTL under her leadership saved you and me a lot of money by working to defeat expensive school bond issues and by reducing the bloated size of the Waukesha County Board. The school board is, no doubt, preparing a new bond issue as we speak, now that they see she’s gone. The County Board? Well, you’ll notice no one’s quit claiming that the workload is too onerous. I wish all the best to Chris and hope she still finds time to comment here at the Chronicle. She is a true conservative.
And she did it all for free to save you and me from the greed of government. Thanks Chris.
The levy, not the rate, is most important. Thanks, Chris.
The levy is the most important, the rate is reflective of the impact to the homeowner–with the school district the rate stays low due to the increase of your home value, with the city, the rate goes up because your home value stays the same until reassesment. It really isn’t that hard (and yes I’ve been confused before).
I have stepped down, but I ain’t dead yet.
Your comments on a reduced county board saving you money is not true. There is no measured savings yet. Oh sure, there is a 10 person reduced nose count … I guess those fractions of a cent savings in terms of salary are somehow something. But that wasn’t really the intent anyway … was it? The real objective was to reduce the number of people on the board to create a greater influence of control with those few who would get elected. Oh oh – no one thought conservative radical Rodell Singert wouldn’t get reelected though did they?
Bottom line, the real benefit to the board size reduction will be realized in measure of bond rating changes (if any) and other metric measures of consequence. Because the 90K in salary savings from the 10 reduced positions isn’t anything terms of the ten’s of millions of budget dollars. And we won’t even mention the reduced representation to the citizens and dilution of ratio of representative to voters.
I guess you can tell I was not a fan of the downsizing. I thought it was stupid and Lufter and her group scared the board into downsizing. It worked.
But while I criticize the short sighted effort I will applaud C. Lufter and her run for public office. I didn’t agree with her politics and I didn’t agree with all of her positions – but she put her own skin in the game. She got off the cheap seats and stood up and put herself and family in the public arena of politics. An honest and gallant effort. Good for her. Good for us. Better luck next time – seriously.
Yeah, the way it’s written isn’t what I had intended. The money saving part was supposed to refer to the bond issues, not the county board downsizing. It wasn’t mainly a money thing with the size of the board in my eyes. It was that the board was bigger than it needed to be in order to accomplish the same job. On the other hand, if the money part is insignificant, then give me $90,000. Small, unmarked bills are preferable. But the point was that it represented a government bigger than it had to be. It was a symbol of bloated government more than an actual example.
You can still only point to things which may happen, but haven’t happened yet, in defense of a larger board. In the same way, I can predict that there will be no such effect of downsizing the board and we save $90,000! I guess we’ll see.
Excellent response – thank you!