Our Fair Share
When we first moved to San Marcos, we expected to join the “Y” as we had in Austin, but it turned out that there is no “Y” in town. Instead, there is the San Marcos Activity Center, so Peter went to sign up to be able to continue his swimming practice. The charge, he was told was $65. Thinking that was a bit more expensive than the monthly “Y” charge we had been paying, Peter nevertheless said “sign me up.” That’s when he learned the $65 fee wasn’t monthly, it was for the entire year! We get this deal because in 1994 citizens of San Marcos voted for a bond to build the center and part of our city taxes go for its continued existence along with the rest of the Parks and Recreation program.
Next door to the Activity Center is the newly renovated library which is free for San Marcos residents to use. Lending libraries are a most common example of this idea of people coming together to provide a resource for the greater community. The Wikipedia page on the History of Libraries puts it this way, “During the post-Civil War years, there was a rise in the establishment of public libraries, a movement led chiefly by newly formed women’s clubs. They contributed their own collections of books, conducted lengthy fund raising campaigns for buildings, and lobbied within their communities for financial support for libraries, as well as with legislatures and the Carnegie Library Endowment founded in the 20th century. They led the establishment of 75–80 percent of the libraries in communities across the country.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_libraries
Following in this tradition, I watched my mom, who was the librarian (for one dollar a year) and her friend Kathleen, a local lawyer and chair of the Blanco Library board, come together to envision a real library to serve the city and the southern half of Blanco county. Started by the Blanco Women’s club in 1938, due to the efforts of my mom with the visionaries on the board, the Blanco library moved from two tiny rooms behind a storefront in the town square to a 3,800 square foot space in 2000. Part of their work to ensure the future of the library was to create the South Blanco Library District allowing the library to receive a small portion of the city sales tax. The library continues to thrive and has been expanded since again. https://www.blancolib.org/about-us
I started thinking about these benefits I have access to simply because I live within the city limits of this particular town. I also can have the fire department show up when I need them, as do the police, and the city has repaved our neighborhood since we moved into this house. The list goes on. All because we pay taxes. I know I’m an odd duck in many ways, but I’ve never minded paying taxes. I also understood paying student fees as a graduate student even when I didn’t use many of the services available to me. We don’t use the Activity Center or Library nearly as much as we could, maybe should, but they are available to us. If we’re lucky we’ll never need the fire department or police, but they’re on call if we do need them. I haven’t had kids in school in a very long time, but I’d like my great-niece and -nephew and all of their friends to have access to a good educational system. I’m glad to pay taxes for all of this.
Obviously, this all started with Monday being Tax Day, and there are certainly problems with our tax system that are far above my knowledge/pay grade to solve. And yes, I think billionaires probably ought to be paying more in taxes than I am. And of course, government entities need to use our money well. There’s work to be done, but that’s different than thinking taxes are a scam. Much of what our taxes pay for becomes invisible to us because we take it for granted. (After all campus wifi is like air, it’s just there for me to use, right? Oh, right, that’s why we have a technology fee.)
Years ago, on a long car ride with some new colleagues, in a conversation about modern day miracles, one of them said he thought the most amazing thing was the Interstate Highway System. The rest of us burst out laughing, but the comment has always stayed with me, because he wasn’t wrong. When you stop to think about what that tax-payer paid for system has done for the country and the access we have to the far-flung reaches of our country, it really does count as a modern-day miracle.
I’m glad to be paying my fair share. Thank you to others for paying their fair shares. Doing so goes a long way for us all. Stop for a minute this week and think about the intertwined nature of our lives, the things we take for granted that others help pay for and we benefit from. What are the modern-day miracles others paid for that you benefit from? You might be surprised at some items on the list.
Take care,
Gage