Crescent City Times.com

Not Our Fight

Written by

Linda Sutter

in

Opinion and Commentary By Linda Sutter – February 17, 2024

Every Friday afternoon the Crescent City times dot com newspaper holds a 2 pm meeting to discuss stories we are working on and discussing what issues the City and County are facing.

Friday, the 16th of February, a Fire person showed up to present why the Crescent City-Del Norte County Taxpayers Association should withdraw the current tax placed on property owners which was passed by less than 1 vote in 2021. If not withdrawn, it will go to the ballot in November this year to repeal the tax.

The meeting was rather contentious because this fire person was basically asking us to do their job of going before the Board of Supervisors and requesting that the Supervisors develop an ordinance that would allow the fire district to collect insurance on medical calls. Most responses by the Fire Department(s) are not to structure fires but rather medical emergencies and even then many aren’t even emergencies.

The question was asked, “Why don’t the Firemen come to a Supervisor meeting and request that an ordinance be developed?” The response, “We don’t have time.”

My response;

Dear Fire District,

If you want to keep your money that was voted in by less than 1 vote, I suggest you conduct your due diligence.

We fight for the public who cannot sustain continued taxes when the county does nothing to generate revenue, continues to tax us instead of investigating where the taxes are going and obtaining grants.

If the Fire District wants to get involved and work to turn things around instead of taxing us out of our homes, we can show you how it’s done. But if you just want to stand on the street begging with your hands out we can’t help you.

46-62% of this county relies on assistance from Health and Human Services. That means approximately 30% of us must pay for the difference. We simply can’t.

Continued threats about everyone in fire district is going to quit if the tax is repealed is no different than an uncontrollable screaming child in Walmart begging for candy. You all need to put your big boy and girl pants on and work for what you want relentlessly and with passion.

Comments

2 responses to “Not Our Fight”

  1. Jeff

    This is a great story. I was so mad when the tax got approved, especially because of how the votes were weighed. I never heard a follow up on the legal issue with the Harbor Commission and their votes not being counted. My reply to the Fire District would have been “Tough Bananas”, some of us homeowners do not forget how the whole voting process was manipulated and the cocky attitude of the District when the tax was approved. It is time to repeal the tax and find other sustainable ways to pay the three Captains. I am part of the 30% and tired of being hit with more taxes.

    Reply
  2. David

    The fire department is a volunteer fire department it’s a not paid department no matter how hard they’re trying to be a paid department In my opinion. They need to get rid of their board because they do not have the backs of the land owners or the people that pay the taxes for the fire department. You need to follow the money and all the waste. We all have to tighten our belt why doesn’t the fire department have to? And maybe you need to look at where some of the chiefs and captains are from and what district they’re from. This is a volunteer fire department and they need to realize this. I supported this tax when it first started, but now I cannot support it at all. This is a money pit. This county is not LA County. We cannot support big taxes. We need to get new people on the fire department board and some people that have common sense, not pass taxes for firefighters. That’s all they want is to spend money and to be paid. This is my opinion and also what I’ve seen.

    Reply

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