Isn't it amazing how two people can view the same thing -- and see two entirely different things? I look at Coeur d'Alene's Education Corridor as a wonderful expansion of a $156M/year asset (North Idaho College) and a boon to the community for years to come in terms of high-paying jobs (instructors) and training for better-paying jobs. Mary Souza looks at the corridor and sees nothing but skullduggery. After taking time off in wake of the RecallCDA failure to get the recall of Mayor Sandi Bloem & 3 council members on the ballot, Mary's ba-a-a-ack with her latest newsletter, claiming North Idaho College is way over spending:

NIC added more than $2 million extra dollars to our tax burden by taking foregone taxes several years ago when they were trying to buy the $10 million dollar piece of property near the wastewater treatment plant without doing the right thing by going to the voters with a bond election. As it turned out, they still didn’t have enough money, so they had to try a crazy, almost certainly illegal, financial maneuver involving the NIC Foundation, which is a private organization, which then borrowed millions of dollars from Mt. West Bank, where NIC Trustee Judy Meyer’s husband is an owner of the bank’s parent company and bank board member.  It was entirely improper and convoluted. More here.

This is more smoke-and-mirrors from people opposed to the Bloem administration. Remember when an NIC challenger said correctly that the college tax rate had doubled in 5 years, only to leave out the part that actual tax dollars had gone up only slightly as a result of falling valuations (in my case, $15 in those 5 years)?

Question: In actual dollars, how much have your North Idaho College taxes gone up from 2007 through 2011?