One of the problems is, believe it or not, politics. The elected town officials being UDP used the fact that the last goverment was PUP and would not give them what they deserved. Well now both local and national are UDP. I bet AC will still not get what is needed from GOB because GOB is broke.
So are the local politicians, wanting to be re-elected, going to go to the voters and say - "we are going to force you to pay your back taxes - even though if we collect those, it is only a drop in the bucket, so we are going to increase your taxes also".

If the solutions are going to be found, it requires all of us to be willing to pay what is needed. It will require the voters to demand of the politicians to do what is needed and tax us if necessary. Good luck. It probably won't happen. Especially if people here keep finding reasons why they should not pay more than a few hundred dollars on property worth hundreds of thousands.

It would be much more helpfull to discuss how we can find the needed revenues, and it is undeniable that more money is needed, than to talk about why we should not using reasons like a relitively small amount of back taxes are not collected. Yes, 40% is alarming. But 40% of what? If that 40% amounts to very little of what is really needed, do you expect the policticians to go after it? That is not the answer.