Commentary by Samuel Strait – November 4, 2022 Since Measures T and U qualified for the November Ballot, the City and County have issued a steady stream of pleas to voters to maintain the additional Sales Tax Hike in order for both governments to "maintain" vital services. Now that we have had the increased sales tax collected for over a year and a half, it is time to see who it is exactly that benefits from nearly six million in additional tax revenue and who was most likely to have paid the tax. Most items that any local resident pays for, including non taxable items, pay the increased one percent sales tax in one form or another. There is literally no escape from the levy of the increased tax, whether it's on the item when purchased or on the transportation bringing the item to a store for you to purchase. Those that reside in the County year around pay most of the tax. In return we have received from local governments, a raise for all employees. Have you as a voter received a pay raise other than that of the mandated minimum wage increase in January of 2021? Both governments have hired additional employees to lessen the "burden" for local government employees. Have you had your boss hire additional employees to make your job easier in the last eighteen months? Both governments have hired the new employees to improve and retain vital services. Has your employer hired anyone in the last year and a half to improve and retain "vital" services in the business that you are employed? The County and City have maintained that increasing wages and benefits, plus incentives for new hires will allow both the County and City to hire sought after deficiencies in their work force of which they have been unable to hire in the immediate past. Has your place of employment experienced staff shortages and been unable to be fully staffed during the past eighteen months? I would venture to guess that the answer to all the above questions are not what either government would want to hear. Not only has County and City governments placed themselves before all else in Del Norte County, but have used the sales tax money for many expenditures of questionable nature. Hiring of employees using the tax money before vacant general fund positions are filled. Hiring employees that have questionable connections to Police, Fire, and Emergency Services, such as at Animal Control, Code Enforcement, Planning, and Grant Writing to name a few. Spending very few sales tax dollars on imperative and immediate infrastructure issues. Showy theater, to falsely claim that infrastructure repairs made are "vital" rather that done to influence voting in November. Money spent on projects that are hardly vital in the name of dressing up the City and County with showy monuments to "attract" tourism, thus failing to understand such projects will only require substantial future costs to maintain. While this may seem like the City and County have "honored" their commitment to improve "vital services", what has really come of the expenditure of the sales tax from both governments. Can any one outside of government cheer leaders claim ANY improvement of services or that the service would disappear if the funding was repealed? Can any one claim that Animal Services, Code Enforcement, the Sheriff's Department, Fire, or the now top heavy Emergency services suddenly became better at dispensing their "vital" services, or has service surprisingly remained much the same? Will spending the sales tax revenue on trash service for the homeless result in any change to that particular problem? Will the continued theft of tax payer money, in the form of the local sales increase, by the defeat of the tax repeal change the dynamic of government waste in both governments? Other than those that benefit most from the sales tax revenue, nothing either government has done, improved services, or substantially corrected the millions of dollars in deferred maintenance that both governments have allowed to accumulate after years of focusing on growing government, not that which benefits those they are meant to serve. I could go on nearly endlessly pointing to dysfunction at both the City and the County, yet the point of this is to focus on the fact that local residents have paid a steep price to continue to be serviced by government departments that are hardly up to the task of providing competent and vital services. Both State and Federal policies have created a financial train wreck, upon which the County and City have piled on in the name of being beneficial to the citizens in this County. The local governments have not been successful in creating a trustworthy record of achievement with the sales tax revenue in the past eighteen months to justify its continuation. Vote YES on both Measures T and U to lower sales tax and ask both governments to improve services next time before asking the voters to approve a burden in a time of privation. That's YES on T and U!