Dear Editor:
Ventura’s Mayor believes that we will feel better if we pay another $340 to a Ventura City general fund versus it going into a State fund! Really? Aren’t I still out $340? I feel better already.
Mayor Nasarenko is campaigning for this tax increase on the premise that Ventura voters will support a tax that is kept and spent locally. He fails to make it clear that $340 out of every household budget is still $340, regardless of where and how it is spent. To the average taxpayer, more taxes paid out of their household budget will reduce their ability to pay rent or their mortgage. It cuts into their food budget, their travel and vacation capability, as well as their medical care and their own future retirement.
Mayor Nasarenko also feels that citizens should be willing to tax themselves because there will be a Citizen’s Oversite Committee. When has any oversight committee, appointed by the city, ever challenged spending after it has been spent?
Finally, he fails to remind voters that there is no guarantee that the $340 will be spent on any, or all, of the city needs. No post-audit citizen’s oversight committee will be able to track City spending because all of the records are kept and controlled by the City.
An oversite committee has no power to reverse any spending after the fact. It is a smoke screen to give voters a false sense that a citizen’s oversight committee can put any concerns about “how funds are spent” to rest. The fact remains that once that tax is passed, no one will look at the tax again and no reversals will ever happen.
With a current surplus and better than expected revenues, there is no need to tax citizens more.
Robert Alviani
VREG Chair
Breeze (June, 1866):
I am sick and tired of walking around Ventura and finding an excess of horse manure everywhere that I go. On the promenade, Plaza Park, in our river bottoms, downtown.
When I attempt to cross Main St. there is so much horse dung that I can hardly make it. Can’t the VPD make the carriages use a side street or are they too busy arresting people for exceeding the 5MPH speed limit and arresting horse thieve? I’m not going to approve a sales tax of .0000078% until the VPD protects me from horse dung.
And at the same time I see our police department making arrests because bar patrons are spitting at spittoons and missing.
Isn’t our tourist trade important? Let the bar patrons enjoy spitting and clean up our city from manure so that tourists enjoy coming here.
Homer Victoria
Ventura
Editor:
End of Vince Street off Avenue. Is this a hillside coming down one heavy rain??
Laura Flores
Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.
~ Sitting Bull – Lakota Sioux-1866
