[Editor’s note: this letter was also sent to the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors.]
I strongly protest this newest flood control program that you are trying to push down the throats of property owners. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the $17,789 annual fee you proposed to impose on our already too high property taxes. This is more than I make in a year with social security.
You have presented this proposal in an extremely devious manner with pamphlets that look like junk mail, and by putting the original protest form on the very back of the four page pamphlet. Many property owners tossed it away thinking it was junk mail. In news articles, it suggests that the proposal will only cost property owners $54 more on their property taxes. This is intensely misleading.
Schools, hospitals, agricultural acreage, warehouses, and who knows what else that you have included, with outrageous fees of $30,000 plus in an economy that is struggling to survive. Not only that, all property taxes have an assessment included by the Flood Control Agency. Therefore, this equals double taxation, which is against the law.
Your latest ploy is to put it on a ballot for people to vote on. I can almost guarantee that those who aren’t in this flood control program will push it through, which I strongly believe that you are hoping for without regard to those who are truly affected by it. What are you thinking of? Or is it some drummed up proposal to make a name for yourselves? We all want clean water, but there are other ways to accomplish it.
I do hope with all my heart that you will reconsider what you are doing. This is not the time to push clean water by excessive taxation, bullet trains or the many other proposed jobs you have in mind. Make a budget and stay within it like all the rest of us peons have to do.
Carol Holmes