Regarding the article, “Hearing to focus on tax proposal to battle heroin, homelessness”: One of the few primary purposes of local governments is to provide a measure of safety for its citizens. That is why police departments and related initiatives should be funded first from the precious taxes we vote to be extracted from our hard-earned paychecks. When additional needs pertaining to these core functions of government are identified, the first priority of a true government leader is to identify those non-essential activities that must be cut back or eliminated in order to appropriately fund those essential functions.
That is why I was livid to read that our county executive and county council are proposing to increase our sales taxes to fund criminal justice. County officials who propose such funding are disingenuously playing on our fears for our safety. We are already taxed sufficiently to pay for all the criminal justice services we need. Yet we may not be taxed enough to provide all the public funding some desire for executive travel, employee benefits, performing arts, fair sponsorships, and the like.
I voted for Dave Somers (twice) to serve as our county executive because I believed he was a man with integrity and sound financial judgment. If he really is, let him first lead the county council to reduce the budgets of non-essential services — then ask we the people to vote whether we want to pay more taxes to restore funding to these many non-core functions. That would demonstrate real leadership with integrity.
I will never vote for a tax to fund essential functions of government like criminal justice. Doing so merely demonstrates submission to a deceitful political ploy.
Kent Hendricks
Bothell
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