Mayor Suzette Cooke’s statement (“Kent seeks applicants for city’s new Financial Sustainability Task Force”, Kent Reporter website) that a limit on property tax increases of 1 percent per year is the underlying structural problem in the budget process is factually incorrect.
Increases in budgetary spending paid for by taxpayers have more to do with decisions on how to spend tax revenue than actual costs. Which services are offered, and the amounts a city is willing to pay for them can and should be negotiated, based on their worth to the entire community.
However, too often “city services” wind up benefiting an elected official’s political career more than the majority of residents.
The cost of city-subsidized mass transit is a prime example. Most tax-paying Kent residents travel to their destinations by car.
However, not only do they have to subsidize the cost of buses and trains that disrupt their daily lives, they also have to put up with unpainted roads and pray that a piece of a bridge doesn’t fall down.
The answer to revenue shortfalls isn’t to increase tax rates on hardworking taxpayers; it’s to find ways to lower costs with better decision-making. In this regard, limits on property tax increases should motivate decision makers not to throw money at projects and purposes that benefit the few at the expense of the many.
If the mayor and the City Council can find ways to decrease property taxes, even by just a percent or two, they deserve to be re-elected. They might even deserve a raise.
– Lynda Accisano
Talk to us
Please share your story tips by emailing editor@kentreporter.com.
To share your opinion for publication, submit a letter through our website https://www.kentreporter.com/submit-letter/. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. (We’ll only publish your name and hometown.) Please keep letters to 300 words or less.
