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Dear Editor,
File this under “Californian Grooming”.
Mendocino County Supervisor Ted Williams fired this email into a crowd of unsuspecting people:
“Our current Department of Transportation situation is not sustainable. It’s time to fund the basic services that the public expects. Fire, roads, and law enforcement. Every county resident uses a county road to get to work, school, medical appointments and other life necessities each day and expects maintenance on their road.”
Sounds like he is grooming us for another tax hike.
Recall that trusting voters waaaay back in November approved the continuation of an expiring sales tax added to support libraries and fire districts. And that the County balanced its budget last year by redirecting Covid relief money, all $16 million of it, from small businesses for whom it was intended, into the General Fund.
Not good enough says Ted! If you want the County to provide you with basic services for which you are already paying, he says we need to cough up some more money. Of course, they will be super careful with this money once they get their books in order.
Just like tech firms are looking for a bailout to cover their losses when SVB went belly up, Mr. Williams is looking for you to bail out the County to compensate for their ongoing financial mismanagement.
-John Redding
Bastards. Are pissing off what they get already. Administrative costs for a bunch of fat lazy lames. The roads suck. The county bldgs rarely get maintainance. Every thing they do costs many times what it would if private industry bid the job. They are all focused on pronouns and dysphorias rather than what they get paid to do. I say cut taxes my property taxes are way too high already. And sales tax is more than total tax should be. Off with their heads
A lot of government work is already done by private contractors who have bidded on the jobs.
Also, the low bid is not always the best bid.
Who pays the contractors? And how? Tolls for every road? Subscriptions? Will someone’s house have to burn because their subscription lapsed?
I totally agree that our supervisors are not doing there jobs. They always take the easy way out. Just add more taxes on the working class. We’re over burden with so many taxes. Already. The supervisors don’t look into that our hard earned tax dollars are wisely spent. There is no control or being held accountable. For any of the county departments. They just say needed more money . Just like every government take a look at our state as a whole. No one in government is held accountable
I’m so sick of them using fire as a scare tactic to get more money, and then not actually do anything for emergency preparedness..
Grooming: The new buzzword of the paranoid disgruntled.
Couldn’t just disagree, point out the flaws of the opposing view, the merits of yours. Nope. It has to be nefarious, sensational. Can’t win on logic? Then be afraid.
Chill, your tantrums are noise to cooler heads.
To the writer: please move to a new state if you don’t like the system. Otherwise please stop this bad faith argument over taxes. The BOS are voted in by people like you and me. Expect higher taxes to maintain the same underfunded infrastructure. 🙂 Or better grow your community and become a real community with a tax base that is less dependent on large urban counties to make up the difference. ?
You wrote “Or better grow your community and become a real community with a tax base” and I completely agree. The County needs a lot of economic development. But in terms of action not words.
There are too many people coming here (and live here) to hide their illicit activity. I.E. Not pay taxes, use public facilities to the point of needing more than regular maintenance. On top of it the community is hell bent on saving these incredibly old buildings even to the point where they sit empty for decades due to the lack of maintenance, and extensive obsolete use for business/residential users. For example: Ukiah has this old Hotel that needs to be demo’ed yester-decade and it keeps the downtown from being something successful. The community is also very anti-outsider business too. All these attributes add up to a collective self destruction from within. :P….
Yes. Not to mention the billions of illegal dollars that have flowed through this county while schools, libraries, and other public services have barely scraped by.
Oh yeah they’ll raise your taxes, but you can take this to the bank where your money used to be: they won’t fix a single pothole. The money will go to increased salaries and more nepotism hires. This bureaucracy does not exist to serve the public, they exist to serve themselves.
The majority of County staff only recently got raises to catch up to being close to competitive. A person at McDonalds made the same wage or more than a starting wage at the County even in technical depts. Hell many staff members work two jobs to afford to live here. When you speak of Nepotism you speak solely about elected heads and appointed figures which come from the broken system this community votes for in every election cycle.
The county residents are already taxed to the limit. We voted more library tax to get a boogie woogie piano show? We voted more street tax to get State Street in Ukiah with too many lights and pedi crossing signs? We voted Measure B to get a $5 million rehab center the size of a 3 bdrm home and a RV training center no one wants? Please vote your wallets and not your ideal wants. We cannot afford more taxes, period.
Little negative and miss informed perhaps? Firstly: The State St improvements come from State Grants. Locals paid no additional taxes for State St, if they did it came out of the city general fund which is primarily funded by sales / property taxes. Cities apply for grants from the State to get large infrastructure projects built. This is a normal process. Second: Measure B is not just the house that sits on the site but an accumulation of staffing and services provided by the county. Payroll wages and resources also come with the house. It is a flat $20 a year per unit on local property taxes. That makes it .06 cents a day per local property owner. Please, this is hardly a concern and you probably don’t even blink when you blow $150 at over priced grocery store. Thirdly: No one wants? I beg to differ based on your inaccurate portrayal of the tax situation tells me you are ill informed about how gov’t works or what the needs are in the community.
You get what you vote for. Had a chance to change but nope,went right back 100% into the toxic leftist ideology that got ya’ll here in the first place. Now, take your deserved rewards, higher taxes this time. Next up, loss of children due to teachers rights trump parents rights. Stay tuned.
This isn’t a partisan issue. 🙂 Please take that nonsense to Arkansas.