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Lizakoski meeting
Fresh off his “don’t raise taxes for EMS, just do a better job on collections” (to paraphrase) last night in front of City Council, the energetic local activist Al Lizakowski announces:
To all Residents of Ocean Shores, On Wednesday, September 16, we are having a meeting at the public library at 5:00pm. Any and all who would like to participate in volunteering to help place street signs or helping to prepare a mail-out to all Ocean Shores registered voters for the purpose of rejecting the current Lid Lift are invited. Jean Snyder and Al Lizakowski
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on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 8:34 am and is filed under North Coast News.
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There are members of our City Council that do not register their dogs here. Does that not make them ineligible to stay in office? Do they register their cars here? They are evading our taxes if they are not.
Last time I checked, one has the right to speak about taxation without representation too. As a property owner he has the right to protest taxes too. You might have heard about the Boston Tea Party. He probably has more right to protest than any registered voter. In fact, he does not get all the discounts residents who are over 65 or disabled and of limited income get. So he could be paying for others’ share of the burden.
What we should be looking at are
Initiative Measure No. 1033
Initiative Measure No. 1033 concerns state, county and city revenue.
This measure would limit growth of certain state, county and city revenue to annual inflation and
population growth, not including voter-approved revenue increases. Revenue collected above
the limit would reduce property tax levies.
Should this measure be enacted into law?
Yes [ ] No [ ]
Now this would really put a wrench into the system.
Houses: 3,177 (1,797 occupied: 1,340 owner occupied, 457 renter occupied)
http://www.city-data.com/housing/houses-Ocean-Shores-Washington.html
So, with over 12,000 lots we have about 9,000 potentially non-resident owners. Even our homes are 1380 non-occupied homes.
How many homes have owners that are not registered here, we can only guess. However from the county we know we have 3290 registered voters. Since we have about a 2:1 ratio of people to homes or 1645 homes with registered voters, the numbers above seem to work out.
Those that are registered here do have a duty to our fellow property owners. They are your potential neighbor when they build too.
I bet they wished they could forgo paying taxes because they do not register here. There are probably some that are not registered here and live here full time. They just kept their registration at their other home. That home could be anywhere.
But the issue here is taxes. What if every one of those non-registered property owners donated money to stop the increased taxes? That would represent a great deal of money.
What if they started to donate to future candidates for office? Would that have an impact here?
I would not make them upset. Do to other….
Well now we are getting picky, I do believe he owns a house here in town and if so , he pays taxes just like I do. I believe there are a lot of property owners that live somewhere else part of the year.
Sure wish I could .
Does anyone know that Al Lizakowski does not live in Ocean Shores, and he is not registered to vote in OS.
Sounds a little fishy to me…..
The truth is that the 27 cents is not all going to EMS. The Mayor’s EMS levy is actually a lid lift on current property taxes and he has already announced that he plans on using part of the money to bring back laid off workers. In other words, he is “robbing Peter to pay Paul” and you are the one that’s being deceived into paying the bill because he can’t balance the budget. Some accountant!
The current levy is $261,000. It expires on Dec.31, 2009. That is the only amount that the city will be short if the levy does not pass. The issue is not the amount per day. What other cities charge is based upon the valuation of their property. We are almost 3 times higher in valuation than Hoquiam. What they will have to figure out is how to find $261,000 in the budget until they can get a new levy proposed. Also, the department needs to review how it bills for calls, what it writes off, and also what we charge the other Fire Districts we now support. The method of a per call basis is not sufficent to cover the 276 BILLED CALLS, not all of the calls, to these areas over the last year. This data is as of July 31, 2009. That is equivalent to 28.8% of our calls. That means that $318,000 of our budget is spent on them. We can no longer be the lady in waiting for the county. Either they pay their fair share of our overhead, or provide the services themselves. They may not like the fact that there is no free lunch anymore, but we are not their rich uncle. We need to focus on Ocean Shores. We also need to realize that if you call the EMS service and they do not transport you, that there should be a charge. Time, materials, and labor are involved in every call. Other cities do this. Lean times require change. Precedent changes. Look at the courts. Laws are overturned, previous precedents are overturned. That is because the courts realize that technology, industry, and social standards and situations change. Things evolve. We can no longer be the buggy whip manufacturer in the automobile age. We have to change because our needs change. We need a funded EMS that runs based upon the revenue it generates by billing for the services provided. If you use it you pay for it. You also require all that require it to be ready 24/7 to pay for that cost of labor, equipment, and facilities.
I’m worth 0.27 cents a day, How about you?