Jadin's veto should be tossed By Warren Bluhm News-Chronicle You've loaded up the credit card but have been making regular payments in large chunks, but then times slow down, the car needs to be repaired, the insurance bill goes up. So you don't go out as often, and you make the minimum payment on the card instead of paying it down as quickly as you had. On the other hand, should you take a second job or dip into the savings acount so that you can keep making those larger payments? After all, the longer you stretch out the debt, the more you will pay in interest - and paying interest doesn't put food on anyone's table except the employees of the credit card company. That's the dilemma Mayor Paul Jadin and the Green Bay City Council found themselves in as they approached the 2002 budget last week. Times are tough - the insurance bill is going up more than 11 percent, the general economy has been slowing down for nearly two years now - and the mayor introduced a budget to cover the increase in costs. But then there was this $14 million debt to consider. Given the same choice as our household up above, Jadin chose to dip into the savings account - in this case a one-time $939,000 credit from the state retirement fund - to pay a nice chunk of the debt up front and avoid a lot of interest down the road. Then he performed the municipal equivalent of taking a second job to cover the budget - he raised taxes, by 36 cents per $1,000. If your property is worth $100,000, the tax bill goes up $36 for city purposes. That doesn't seem to be a great burden, except when you consider that Brown County lowered its tax bill by $1 on that $100,000 house, despite taking over a department - the emergency dispatch center - and a couple of dozen employees who had been drawing their paychecks from the city. Not to mention that with Wisconsin being the third-highest-taxed state of the 50, every little tax increase hurts a little more. Led by Ald. Guy Zima, the council decided on a 6-5 vote to dip a little further into that savings account instead - putting off $470,000 on those debt payments and reducing the tax increase for that $100K homeowner by $11. Jadin vetoed the budget a few days later, arguing that the result will cost more money down the road in interest payments. He's right, but he's wrong. Yes, the total debt service for the next 28 years increases by an amazing amount by putting off that $470,000 payment. But how many property owners will have to dip into their savings accounts and/or take a second job to pay their tax bills? For how many is that $11 the straw-that-kills-the-camel difference between getting by and finally deciding to sell the house altogether? Jadin said the tax rate is still lower than it was when he took office in 1995, but that argument assumes that the 1994 rate was acceptable - and with a major reassessment tucked in between, the tax bill is higher on most property anyway. The numbers were barely there to pass the cut - if Ald. Kathleen Johnson hadn't been sick, the vote would have been 6-6 and Jadin would have killed it with his tie-breaking power. But Zima had the right idea. The numbers aren't there to override the veto, but it should be overridden. Or $470,000 in alternative cuts in city spending should be found. Property taxpayers need the break now, not in 28 years.