About a year ago all the talk around budget time was about saving taxpayers’ money and trying to lessen the tax burden placed on homeowners. After all, voters had recently defeated the Palesky tax initiative, which would have dramatically cut local budgets.

In light of the defeat, municipal leaders from across the state wiped their collective brow and said they would be more mindful of taxpayer concerns and try to keep budget increases to a minimum.

That does not seem to be happening this year.

In South Portland, the City Council is looking at a new budget that increases spending by 4.6 percent, which equates into a higher tax bill for all. Perhaps the worst thing about the entire process is the fact that residents were told about the great deal they are getting for their tax dollars, a statement that many disagree with.

And adding insult to injury is the fact that the city is now in the process of revaluating the entire city. This will increase property valuations by 8 percent on average and in the process shift more of the tax burden onto residential properties.

I realize the city has to revaluate property to fall within state regulations. But when developing this year’s budget, city leaders should have taken the revaluation into account when deciding to move forward with its budget. It’s not like this came out of the sky, it was planned and calculated for several months and city officials were well aware of it before the budget was adopted.

All of this spending comes in light of the city’s most ridiculous purchase in many years. The city agreed to spend $650,000 (and outbid a potential community participant in the Children’s Theater of Maine) when it purchased the armory building.

That money certainly could have gone a long way in helping to offset the spending increase by next year. The thing that really bothers me is that there are no plans for this building. I wish I could afford to spend nearly $700,000 without a plan or purpose.

This problem of ignoring tax reform is not only a local issue, but a statewide one as well. And the Legislature all seems to have forgotten about this issue during the latest session.

Last year, we heard legislators saying that it took the state many years to fall into its current situation and it would take many years to get out. I figured these many years would include some sort of legislation that would attempt to fix the problem because it obviously is not going to fix itself.

But nothing happened in this session in terms of tax relief except for the Legislature passing on the TABOR ballot initiative. Instead, at the close of the session, legislators were patting themselves on the back and announcing what a successful session it was.

Was it ever, if you are stockpiling mercury thermostats and now have the chance to get rid of them in an environmentally friendly way, or a resident of Chebeague Island, which the state allowed to split from the town of Cumberland and form its own community. And wasn’t the state talking about consolidating, not expanding the number of independent municipalities and schools?

Nowhere in this laundry list of what could be considered special interest items is there any solid action on tax relief. Even when the Legislature wrapped up the session a couple of weeks ago all the talk was about Dirigo, a program that serves fewer than 10,000 people.

I voted against the Palesky initiative. I bought all of the doomsday scenarios raised by state and local officials and maybe they were right.

But what I’m upset with is the fact that I believed the same people when they said that there would be some meaningful tax reform. That is a promise that seems to have been left by the wayside this year as the government again puts their hands into my pocket.

Ken Tatro is a South Portland resident and a regular contibutor to the Current.