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On? April 19 the Board’s Treasurer made a revealing statement about power. ?In his reply to my email under the topic “Request for FERIMD Annual Reports and Budgets”, he wrote, “What started as you offering to help gather information for the board now appears to be your own personal power grab.” Apparently, he thinks that being on the Board is about power. It shouldn’t be about power; it should be about service.? The Board should recognize that the power is in the hands of the people who pay the taxes, and the Board’s responsibility is to execute the will of the taxpayers. Being on the Board shouldn’t be about perceived power.

I’ve collected all the tax information for the property our house is on from the country GIS, and those data are shown in the first attached document. ?This property has paid $11,276 in taxes to FERMID. Since there are 30 properties in the Road District, my guess is that the District has collected more than $250,000, probably a lot more, in taxes over the past 10 years. That’s a lot of money. We do have two paved roads, but what accountability do we have in terms of budgets and financial reports?

The second attached document is a copy of Cochise County’s “Summary of FY 2019-2020 Primary Tax Rates and Levy Per District”. Notice the far-right column is tax rate “Percentage Increase”. The first line on the second page shows that the Fairfield Estates RMID tax rate increased by 1545.56% from FY 18-19 to FY 19-20! ?I don’t know how that was calculated, but there it is.

I do know there was substantial increase in FERMID tax on our property from $53 in 2018 to $903 in 2019 (see table in first document). ?I still have no idea of the reason for the tax increase. The President and Treasurer have ignored repeated requests from three households for financial reports and budgets. ?I completely agree with what Kevin wrote on April 20, “….this in not personal nor are we here to question anyone’s or any family’s integrity……at the end of the day, this is business and we are dealing with taxpayer dollars.”

This is just a weird, opaque and completely unsatisfactory way to run a District that takes tens of thousands of our tax dollars every year. Where is the accountability?

Ken