Why Fort Bend County Judge Write-In Candidate Hates Property Taxes

I keep driving by that bare-bones campaign sign posted on the public right of way along Highway 90A for Fort Bend County Judge write-in candidate Chris Meeks. This is the “Constitutional Republican” who might as well just call herself a Libertarian, having contributed to Ron Paul’s campaign, and lobbied against fluoridated water.

She has her main campaign platform posted right on the sign and it basically says that she wants to do away with property taxes in Fort Bend County.

Property taxes that pay for, you know, stuff like education in our public school system.

And despite the fact that I was pretty candid in my opinions about her and her political views, the candidate actually responded to my posting with a comment.

[Something that some of you may have realized you can’t do anymore.]

Here is an excerpt from the comment:

“Renting to the government via property taxation is slavery. Slaves are not allowed to own property. Vote for freedom and liberty. Write In Chris Meeks for Ft.Bend County Judge.”

I don’t know about you but I’m having trouble trying to relate the first two sentences to each other, or to anything else for that matter.

But what inspired me to write anew about this candidate was a conversation that I had with a local politically savvy person who is also interested in property taxes. I mentioned to her what I had read in Juanita’s blog today about how Bob Hebert is giving away nail files and she went off on Chris Meeks. She said that she had looked her up on the property tax rolls and determined that Meeks didn’t even own any property in Fort Bend County. “Why does she care about property taxes,” she asked. “She doesn’t pay any.”

I filled her in on the fact that since she is running as a write-in candidate, she is running under her maiden name, Meeks, rather than her married name, Christine Zubizarreta.

It wasn’t a half of an hour later that she reported that she located her on the property tax records. “Wow,” was all she said.

So I got curious and went to the Fort Bend County Central Appraisal District website and repeated the query.

Wow.

Chris Meeks, with her husband own a piece of property in Fort Bend County whose assessed value is over $550,000. Depending on where that is, and in what school district, that could amount to a property tax bill of over $20,000 a year.

No wonder Meeks is against property taxes.

I would be against property taxes too if I had to lay out that chunk of change to the county every year.