I am a senior citizen and I voted, with reservations, for the April 24 ballot items.<\/p>\n
I do have thoughts regarding the clear voter rejection. I am unable to comprehend how city officials, and in particular our new mayor, believe that asking Kent residents to cough up more money in taxes right now, regardless of purpose, can possibly fly.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t that long ago that the City Council – with then council member Dana Ralph voting in the affirmative – voted to raise the real property tax rate. At the time, it was estimated – and stated in the Kent Reporter – that the raise would mean a home valued at $300,000 would mean an increase of roughly $150 in taxes.<\/p>\n
What nobody bothered to mention was that the writing was already on the wall that home valuations were going to jump considerably. In my case, my annual tax bill rose by $500.<\/p>\n
You can dress it up all you want, Dana, but that is a huge hit. She has already promised to take the entire matter back to the voters instead of looking at other options.<\/p>\n
How much does it cost just to set up a ballot vote?<\/p>\n
Separately, I need to remind everyone involved that the majority of the seniors who live in Kent exist on fixed incomes. Like most other taxes in Washington, property taxes are regressive. Only those with extremely low incomes get a break.<\/p>\n
Dana, et al., $500 per year is a huge hit for the majority of seniors in their “golden years.”<\/p>\n
I am forming my own club named STOPSOS. Stop S__ Our Seniors. The choice of verbs beginning in “S” is optional.<\/p>\n
– Stephen Litster <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am a senior citizen and I voted, with reservations, for the April 24 ballot items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34357"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}