THIS IS THE SEASON FOR SETTING OUR TAX RATES

Because we're all human, we like to complain, particularly if we're sitting on hard chairs drinking hot cups of coffee in that most pure form of democracy: the coffee klatch.

And, while there is never a shortage of reasons to complain, one of our favorite gripes is taxes. High taxation. Unfair taxation. When we really get on a roll -- just about the time the caffeine kicks in -- we complain about how "they" are spending all our money. We don't like it. "They" are wasting our money all the time. Don't "they" have a lick of sense?

Of course, a coffee klatch has never worked on a budget to keep the city operating for another year. Nor have unelected coffee drinkers ever had to deal with finding substitute teachers. Why, most members of even the best coffee group have never had to put up with whining taxpayers just like themselves.

So, naturally, very few of these coffee-fueled, red-blooded Americans have ever held a tax-rate hearing.

But that's exactly what's happening in school board, city council and county commission meetings all around us. By law, any governmental unit in Missouri that has a property tax has to hold a public hearing to set tax rates. This has been going on for years.

At last week's Cape Girardeau City Council meeting, there was a 60-item agenda. Council members dealt with zoning issues and ordinances and resolutions and appointments and liquor licenses and water mains and sewers.

And property tax rates for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Want to know how many taxpayers showed up? Look around at your coffee klatch. Chances are there are more taxpayers drinking coffee on any given morning than all the taxpayers combined who will show up at a tax-rate hearing in Southeast Missouri.

Let's face it. A hearing on tax rates isn't very glamorous. And tax-rate hearings are boring to the point of being painful. Well, not as painful as an automobile accident, of course. But a lot more of us are in car crashes than attend tax hearings.

When the Missouri requirement for tax hearings was enacted several years ago, many local officials worried that tax rates would get so bogged down in public hearings that government itself might be jeopardized. What those fearful officials failed to consider, however, was the total lack of interest taxpayers have in such matters.

Unless they're drinking coffee, of course.