Letter from City of Renton Mayor, Jesse Tanner
[Ms. Petersen's annotations in red]

(in response to Ms. Petersen's letter of Jan 28, 2002)

January 30, 2002

Inez P. Petersen
3306 Lake Washington Blvd N #2
Renton, WA 98056-1978

Dear Ms. Petersen:

Since you have finally asked an intelligent question in your letter of January 28th, I am suspending my policy of not responding to foolish and vituperative [fault finding] attacks and am going to respond to your letter. [So it's foolish is it, to inquire about development which exceeds our roadway capacity, drainage problems, misuse of eminent domain, possible illegal zoning practices, the true cost of the new city hall, or spending another $250,000 on the new city hall?]

First, let me say that I-747 has become law and the City of Renton has meticulously adhered to that law. We duly increased our levy by 1% in 2002. In addition, as Mr. Jerry Crossler of the King County Assessor's Office has correctly pointed out, we then used 3.79% of banked capacity that we had not used in previous years. There is nothing in I-747 that prohibits taxing entities [like rogue cities such as Renton] from using legal taxing authority that was banked in previous levies. [And wouldn't it be great if the the major and the council members understood our simple message regarding no more taxes instead of looking for loopholes like "banked capacity" to increase taxation.]

Also, as Mr. Crossler points out in his e-mail to Terry Persson, 5.01% of our overall levy was based on new construction. I do not believe that even Mr. Eyman would advocate allowing new property to go untaxed. [Heaven forbid that a property should go untaxed for a portion of a year.] The new development that generated this 5.01% of our levy is due to the untiring efforts of the City Council and this Administration to move this City forward and make it into the world class City that we want it to be. [The mayor's capitalization of the word city is very revealing. It says to me that his vision of the City is so much better than that of the people providing the money to run the city. Working toward becoming a world class city is a worthy goal, but there must be a balance between the vision and what is practical. I would like to suggest that the mayor start using his capital C's on words like Citizen before we start using our capital C's on words like Chump.]

I hope I have answered to your satisfaction the question you raised in your letter. If not, I suggest that further explanations and correspondence will be futile; therefore, I am re-establishing the policy outlined above. [Well, it looks like I'm in the dog house again. But you can be sure I'll continue to shine the light of truth on questionable actions at City Hall.]

Sincerely,
signed Jesse Tanner
Mayor

cc: Renton City Council
Jay Covington

[I'm still chuckling over the mayor's letter. We can laugh at the spin the mayor is trying to put on the over-taxation issue and his arrogant snub of me because I was bold enough to join forces with Terry Persson to bring this subject forward. But isn't it a sad commentary on our city leaders? And do you see Council members coming forward in defense of the people paying the taxes? No, only Don Persson. The rest of the Council wants to tax us just as badly as the mayor. Will you remember this when it is time to vote at the next election? I hope so.]

File: rpan/taxscam5.html [return to taxscam webpage]
Posted: 02/01/2002