Measure G has been proposed by politicians Rob Rennie, Marcia Jensen and Steve Leonardis hinting that the future is bleak – yet not telling you that the town’s own budget for at least the next 5 years has a surplus. And that’s not counting the money they have stashed for the past 4 years in a variety of accounts totaling over $16,000,000.
They claim the money will be “dedicated exclusively for use by the Town to maintain essential services-“
According to the town attorney, Rob Schultz, the tax money can be spent on ANYTHING LEGAL. They can’t spend the money on anything “exclusively” now, or anytime in the next 20 years that this tax will exist.
They said they were in agreement with the Ad Hoc Committee who voted for a tax. However, they left out a few details: ………….that Ad Hoc Committee was two years ago…………….I was on the committee and the other two members of that Ad Hoc Committee plus myself have signed a statement sent to the Council that we would NOT SUPPORT Measure G. Did they tell you that the council voted against the tax and the third one told us he would not vote to approve Measure G? How honest and transparent is this Council?
They promised you citizen oversight; however, they can spend their money on ANYTHING legal according to the town attorney. What’s to supervise?
They’ve also neglected to tell you that they have stashed an additional $16,000,000 of our taxes for the past 4 years. Ask them about the additional $4,000,000 per year that gets stashed, amongst other things, employee salaries and benefits which were just approved to go up 17% over actual wages last year……for one year! Why would you want to give them more money when they can already hide $4,000,000 in plain sight annually? It’s because they are betting that you won’t look at the books, so we did.
Keep this in mind as more information the Council has not told you regarding Measure G:
- The town will get $7,200,000 from SB1 (2017).
- The town will get $100,000 every year from the land sale of the first section of the North 40.
- That will happen again when the north section sells.
- The town will get two huge bumps with the construction of 300+ market rate units hit the market
- The town will get another huge bump when they build the 450,000 square feet of commercial businesses! They will get the property improvement tax and the sales taxes!!
- The town will get $572,000 every year for the next 30 years with measure B.
- The town just received a $700,000 IDEA grant for traffic signals.
It goes on and on.
- With all of this money coming in; with a budgeted surplus over the next 5 years; with $16,000,000 showing up over the past 4 years; with the Council knowing all of this, why tax us even more?
In short, Rennie, Jensen, Leonardis and the staff have not told you the truth by not telling you the whole story.
If they omitted these facts, how many more have we not found?
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