Opinion Piece By Donna Westfall – February 24, 2018 –

There are lots of illegal ways to avoid taxes,  none of which will be brought up in this article.  Let’s concentrate on all the “legal” taxes that are sucking the blood out of us.

The latest and greatest irritant is the increase in gas taxes and vehicle registration.  Ever hear the saying,, “If you don’t like the law, change it?” People are doing just that. There’s a petition circulating to repeal the gas/vehicle tax.  I hope to see it on the ballot this year. I hope people vote to repeal these taxes. Before hearing that our Democratic California legislature pushed through these taxes, I didn’t know that the gas tax bucket over the years had been drained of billions of dollars to spend for other things than fixing roads and bridges.

According to LA Daily News article published: March 11, 2016 at 5:47 pm | UPDATED: August 28, 2017 at 6:31 am, “The idea that we need more taxes in order to pave our roads is a myth. Our roads are in terrible shape, but it is not because of a lack of funding, it is because many in Sacramento would rather grab more money than spend what they already have.”

“During the last recession, the Legislature moved $1 billion per year in truck weight fees from funding road maintenance to the General Fund.”

So I was thinking, how is it that with 310 days left in Gov. Brown’s term, he has a huge surplus in his budget. BINGO!  That’s how it’s done.  Collect taxes for one thing, don’t spend it on that and shift it over to the general fund to make it look like we’ve got a huge surplus. This sounds like cheating to me.

It’s because he and his Democratic legislature pushed it through during budget meetings.  That’s how you do it. Simple. Easy peasy.  EXCEPT, our road and bridges have not been taken care of and that’s where I get ticked off.

Here’s something else that ticks me off.  Locally, our property taxes and sales taxes are to do things like pay salaries for government employees. And then when something comes up that you want to talk to them, they won’t communicate with you.  Such was the recent case with Interim City Manager, Eric Weir at Crescent City, City Hall.

Here’s what happened.  Jaime Yarbrough invited several people from City and County government to attend a Community Choice Aggregate meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to educate our leaders about alternatives that could result in reduced rates. The only government attendees were, Supervisor’s Roger Gitlin and Bob Berkowitz.   Weir never called back.  Eric Taylor never bothered to call back.  What gives?

Well, there’s more.  There’s always more, but more will come in another article as we’ll be attending a meeting with Crescent City Councilwoman, Heidi Kime and the local taxpayers association board members this afternoon to see if there is anything we can agree to work on together.