Yellowstone County Tax Revenue Up, Are Taxes Going Down? Opinion

News out today from Yellowstone county painted a rosy picture for revenue, according to the Billings Gazette. The county reported revenue at 57.98 million dollars. That's an increase of almost 2 million dollars over last year.

Get our free mobile app

The county also received 15.6 million dollars in American Rescue money and has already decided to put ALL of that money into the infrastructure at Metra. Keep in mind, where most of this money for the county comes from, property and business owners. Now School District 2 picked up an additional 46 million dollars recently of covid19 relief money. That's on top of their state money and County money that comes from AGAIN, property owners and business owners. Add those two together 46 million and 15.6 million, that's 61.6 million additional dollars. Those additional dollars alone are larger than the whole year's county tax collections. So what about us, the taxpayer. Why haven't we seen or heard about any relief coming to us? Spend here, spend there, and nothing. Mill levies are even being considered for different reasons.

Metra gets an additional 15.6 million dollars above their normal budget and they have the nerve to charge us 9 dollars to get into the fair. WOW. Who is going to be the next Robin Hood and take a stand on the taxes that all of us pay one way or another? Are they teaching our kids about how much money they will be allowed to keep once they get into the working world? This tax and spend philosophy must stop. It's breaking us locally and nationally while the governments are fine enjoying all their additional revenue. Are there any fiscally responsible people out there anymore? it doesn't seem so.