4 thoughts on “Caught My Eye…”

1. The commission’s sanitation fee hike is nothing. In their Work Session meeting of April 5 they started talking about directing City staff to get busy preparing a Public Safety Levy, to hire a bunch of new cops and judges and support staff and do on. That, of course, was the predetermined goal all along when the Crime Task Force was formed to provide cover for the proposed tax hike.

   And this new commission hasn’t really even discussed the recommendations from the Task Force. Never asked for any supporting evidence for the recommendations, or examined cost/benefit for any of them, or whatever, and have passed a lot of them on directly to City staff. They’ve mostly blown off the whole step in the process of, “is this really necessary, and why, and what’s it going to get us?” because it was a big daunting task, and seem to be just charging right on to proposing the brand new tax.

   • Terry – the sanitation fee hike might be tough for some. Some on the commission talk about Biden’s inflation and then they add to the pain.
     They should allow recreational pot inside the city limits, add a small tax for the city to use. They should not be raising taxes or fees on the residents. Thanks, JmB

     • The state level marijuana law says any local tax on marijuana has to be imposed at the County level, to be split between county and municipalities. Our Cascade County commissioners have indicated they have no plans to do that, IMO because they are already doing their best to undermine the new law and don’t want local voters to see that tax money rolling into local coffers. Commissioner Briggs has gone as far as to make public statements that he’s opposed to recreational sales and has been using his position to make sure it is as difficult as possible, like hiding dispensaries in heavy industrial.

       There was also talk at the recent commission discussion on the inspection certificate about groups working to get a county wide question on the ballot this Fall to reverse the legality of recreational sales in Cascade County, like Yellowstone is doing. So look forward to that. They claim people were sold a bill of goods about tax money rolling in, which schemers in the legislature ensured would be the case by changing the referendum’s revenue allocation language extensively. And now we’ve also got county commissioners like ours in Cascade working hard to make sure tax money never shows up by not even asking for approval of the local tax option. Textbook example of elected officials not agreeing with the majority will of the voters so using their positions of power to undermine the voters and impose their own will.

       And finally also note there is still a recommendation in the city Crime Task Force list for the City to actively work to overturn the will of the voters as far as legal sales, just sitting there festering. A recommendation that appeared out of the blue between draft and final with no discussion and no background and eventually got passed along to the commission as a final “vetted” recommendation. Which of course the commission accepted without question like all the others. Someone on that task force really managed to pull off a fast one and use their position to sneak in their personal agenda.

     • Terry – Great information and background. Thanks. Maybe I’ll send the county commissioners some bags of Doritos. 😃
       Thanks, JmB

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