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A Candidate for the State House responds to the Evictions of Tenants from the Country Aire Mobile Home Park
The Tahoma Organizer does not endorse or support any candidates for any public office, although we encourage everyone to become involved in choosing our leaders and fixing our broken system of government. However, occasionally an elected official or candidate takes the time to respond to a story we publish. If these responses contain fundraising requests or go beyond simply mentioning that a campaign is in existence, those sentences are removed to avoid the appearance of the sponsorship or endorsement of the candidate's campaign by the Tahoma Organizer.
Jim Vaughn
ON THE FRONTLINES OF DEMOCRACY:
Dear Henry,
I understand your concerns and feel your pain. Sally and I have a small 16 acre farm in Orting. A small creek flows through the middle of our farm. The corrupt Pierce County officials play a shell game. When a wetlands is destroyed when a large corporation, i.e., Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Safeway, etc, moves in, they have to create a wetlands somewhere else. In our case the buffer for the creek use to be 30’ from center and now the county can claim up to 300’ from center. Let’s continue to take away our farm land so we can buy contaminated food products from foreign markets. {sentence removed}
Property Taxes:
In many states, homeowners get a modest exemption from property taxes. More importantly, the rate at which the assessed valuation of their property can increase is limited, usually to 3% per year. This prevents senior citizens from being taxed out of their homes. This, however, has had an undesirable side effect. Many seniors are unable to downsize into a retirement home because they lose this protection when changing homes. After living in their home for many years, a couple can sell their home and purchase another of lower value only to see their property taxes quadruple to an unaffordable level. This can be solved by making their tax valuation protection portable. Until a measure of this sort is implemented, we need to protect our citizens. In addition, our elected officials need to remember that they were elected to represent the citizens of Pierce County. Corporations are not people, and money is not speech. There is no first amendment right for special interests to buy elections and politicians.
Jim Vaughn
Candidate for US Representative in the 8th Congressional District.
253.241.9634
Come help us plant small trees and shrubs at the WSU Wetlands Educational Site in Puyallup!