Opinion and Commentary By Donna Westfall – August 7, 2024
I was born and raised in California. Until Gavin Newsom became Governor of our beautiful state, I had never spent a second thinking about leaving California. Until Biden became our President I had never spent a second thinking about leaving our Country. Thinking about our country possibly being under the domination of Kamala Harris as President; now, thinking about moving is a daily occurrence.
This past week, one of my granddaughters came to visit….. from Ireland. She’s an American citizen and is thinking of having either dual citizenship or giving up her American citizenship. Her reason, right now she has to pay dual taxes and loves living in Ireland.
TAXES! If only that was the biggest reason to leave our State and our Country. But I look around and detest what I see happening.
One of the things I hate the most is lying politicians. Let’s first look at our local community. Measure R; the 1% County sales tax. They said before it passed that none of those funds would be used for salary and benefits. So far, they’ve hired seven people to increase the size of government.
Or our city government. They hired a private firm to run the wastewater treatment plant to save $1.5 million over five years.. That was in 2019. They could have done it back in 2010 when the City sued me (a sitting councilwoman) to keep the sewer rate increase off the ballot. My attorney was from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. He told the Judge they didn’t have to increase sewer rates if they would hire a private contractor. They didn’t listen.
Last month, I verbally asked the City Council to let me know how much it has cost the ratepayers over the nine years they took to finally contract with Jacobs Engineering. Zero, zilch, nada. No response.
You see, you can put in a public records request either verbally or written. At the August 5th City Council meeting I made the request again verbally AND handed in a written request. But I didn’t stop at the sewer rates because part and parcel of the sewer rates gets back to the humongous $43.8 million deal to upgrade and expand the sewer system. Other communities pay in the $20 million range. Not us!
This request was for proof that “materials doubled” was the reason for raising the price from $19.2 million to over $40 million. We’ll see how long it takes our City to cough up that info.
Taxes, lying politicians, attacks on our freedoms and 2nd Amendment rights, education down the toilet, unemployment on the rise, inflation out of sight, etc., etc., etc. Sure I empathized with immigrants from other countries wanting a better life, but letting so many in wholesale is not the way. Now, it looks like the Dem’s are trying to get them the right to vote! Jeez as if free lodging and free health care weren’t enough.
I personally don’t want to move to Texas as so many others fleeing California are doing. Are there any other places on this earth that could be not just different but better?
