The most recent verbal fencing match that broke out Sept. 20 at the Kent City Council meeting during a public hearing was a picturesque portrait of the communication problems that pop up with indecipherable codes and laws.
I cover many cities and city councils and at times I feel like we are all popping crazy pills. Then I break it down and often I find badly written code, mangled law or some weird resolution at the heart of the trouble.
One of the important facts to remember for those who want to throw hatchets at the other side is everyone has a story and things are seldom as clear as the voices in our heads.
The property tax battle over the city and Kent Regional Fire Authority has been brewing for months and is a classic example.
At the Sept. 20 public hearing, Councilwoman Elizabeth Albertson directed some very pointed questions at a couple of the speakers, and there was a considerable amount of emotion on both sides of the microphone.
Tax talk is always a problem and I’m pretty sure God doesn’t understand it.
The Gordian knot of the story is both simple and mind numbing. The first casualty of this kind of fight is clear communication and listening to the other side with more than a head bob and a blink.
In the simplest terms, the battle began when the fire department left the city and became its own taxing agency. That means one taxing entity, the city, became two — the city and the Regional Fire Authority.
Here is where it gets dicey.
There was an operating levy and $1 per $1,000 taxable property from that levy was collected by King County and given to the fire authority. This was done because of state law.
Here is the heart of the argument.
Albertson emphatically said the city collected less taxes and she wanted to see that in the paper. She is correct. The city collected less by $1 per $1,000 because of state law.
The remainder of the levy for the city remained the same.
The problem is the citizens saw an increase due to public approved bonds and levies along with the new fire benefit charge.
Most folks are not going to dig into the fine print. They are going to look at a higher tax bill with property values dropping like a fat rock and start yelling.
Business owners took a look at their bills and started crying foul asking the city to give back about $5 million they estimated was kept by the city when the fire department left City Hall.
I am not going to get into the minutia of that argument without charts, graphs and a confessional booth.
The best avenue I can see is for all sides to take a step back and look at the other side of the story.
Business owners really are on the edge. I owned three business and I am in the process of starting another with my son if things work out right.
Being a small business owner is scary, risky and a wrong decision can mean bankruptcy. That is real. Government officials are always spending other people’s money and it is a different way of operating and completely different perspective on survival.
The council members on the other side of this debate are equally sincere and passionate about what they do. Spend a few minutes listening to Albertson and it is clear she works very hard at doing the best job for the city she can. A person may not agree with her, but she should be given understanding for her side of the story. Juggling the ever shrinking city budget while one constituent after another says cut all those other guys, but keep my program…. I can tell you that would warm my little heart. This is why Albertson and others continue to ask where to make the cuts.
Are there places to cut in a city budget? Of course, but there are tradeoffs and some are painful. Citizens need to get involved and the council needs to encourage discussion at public hearings, not make people feel they will be attacked.
Many will say layoffs are the answer, but that is just more guys out of work.
These are hard problems with all of us facing higher taxes, more bills and crummy TV shows to watch.
If we step back and listen to the other guy’s story, some of these insurmountable problems begin to shrink.
My grandma had the best advice. Things always look better after a piece of fresh baked wild blackberry pie with homemade vanilla ice cream on top.
That is a solution to many problems.
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