The current Kent City Council is loaded with pro-business/anti-homeowner members. Councilmembers Ralph, Albertson, Thomas, Boyce, and Council President Dennis Higgins consistently vote in ways that favor businesses and burden homeowners.
The major case in point is the hard-fought enactment of a business and occupation (B&O) tax to fund repairs to our badly damaged streets and roads. That damage is the direct result of Kent’s huge number of 16- and 18-wheelers that businesses use to distribute their wares. The Kent Valley is the fourth largest small-industrial manufacturing center in the United States. Our streets and roads are punished daily by these huge trucks.
The Chamber of Commerce lobbied the Council to include many exemptions and loopholes into the B&O small print – reducing the amount of revenue the city needs to adequately repair city streets. The Chamber also dictated to the Council that B&O funds only be used for roads and streets on the Valley floor.
Then came the fight over improvement to the 256th Street area, when home and property owners followed the Council’s petition guidelines to overturn the local improvement district (LID) imposition of over $2 million dollars in assessments. In spite of the successful petition, members of the Council (led by business owner Dana Ralph, Elizabeth Albertson, and Dennis Higgins) suggested to the rest of the Council that they overlook the petition and impose another LID on these home and property owners, requiring them to submit a petition (for the third time), to protest this assessment.
To their credit, Councilmembers Perry and Ranniger objected to overturning this second duly-submitted petition and imposing a new LID. Pro-business members would rather burden homeowners than increase the B&O and collect increased revenue from the offending businesses that tear up our roads.
The current City Council consists of too many pro-business members. We need pro-democracy candidates who will uphold their oath to represent the interest of all Kent citizens – not just business owners. The current members are far too cozy with business interests led by the powerful chamber of commerce.
The B&O tax can provide substantial revenue to keep our roads and streets repaired. All the council needs to do is increase the rate assessed from business owners, eliminate most of the loopholes, and reduce the number of big businesses which have been exempted from taxation.
The council has become too fond of turning to home-owning taxpayers for every city need. The businesses who ravage our streets need to be responsible for repairing them. Kent taxpayers are sick of the city burdening us with taxation without fair representation.
I encourage young, informed, educated men and women to run for a seat on our city government. We need your vigorous advocacy to provide fair and just governance instead of us suffering under a governing body that increasingly serves the interests of rich, influential business interests in the city.
– Sandra Gill
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