Dear Editor:
Your story today wraps the YES campaign’s rollout in feel-good Valentine tones. But, no matter how many dollars are spent on the coming media blitz, the truth remains that there is no civic duty to agree with everything city hall prescribes. Every feel-good folly always has a big price sticker attached. It isn’t progress if we can’t afford it.
Almost everyone we know has pride in our town – its neighborhoods, its schools, its parks, its community events and the families who make this their home. This has always been a great place to live. That’s why we stayed.
The suggestion has been planted that if you take pride in your community then you must support with your votes and your tax dollars whatever our city council proposes. That includes re-zoning entire neighborhoods for the “greater good” or spending whatever amount council deems necessary on downtown revitalization or an expensive new Civic Campus.
Reasonable people can and do disagree on what is affordable and fair in each of these regards. That does not diminish their pride quotient or in any way imply they do not love living in Mountlake Terrace.
Leonard French
The negative rhetoric that the NO TAXES side like to spread around really does not seem to indicate that they enjoy living in this City. They like to cast our good friends and neighbors who work for the City government as boogeymen out to get everyone and steal their money. We’re all trying to work together: City government employees, council members and residents, to make this a better place to live. The way I see it the NO TAXES folks are not really proposing solutions or contributing to the effort.
No one, certainly not me, has made anyone working for the the city or citizens with differing views on Prop 1 out to be “boogeymen out to get everyone and steal their money.” I know lots of current and past city employees and can’t think of a thief in the lot of them. Suggesting that NO voters somehow don’t enjoy living here sounds a lot like Council woman Wright’s obtuse suggestion that those against their ideas move out of town. I wonder from where all that vitriol comes.
All he is really saying is that everyone on his side of the issue is working together toward their desired end which is, of course, equally true of everyone on our side. His argument is also that the opponents are not contributing to the only path he/they will countenance as the proper solution. We certainly agree on that, but do not believe MLT will be a worse place to live if Prop 1 fails. I know I won’t stop enjoying living here either way. I hope Mr. Dekoekkoek feels the same.
— Posted on behalf of Leonard French
I respectfully submit that our community will be much worse off and seriously diminished if Proposition 1 fails. Which it won’t… because it received a solid majority of votes in 2012. And momentum is ON for April 2013. The wave of awareness and support increases daily.
Without the bond issue, we have a rundown, embarrassing police facility. Without the bond issue, we will have a beautiful piece of vacant land sitting idle in the heart of our town, with no development plans. Without the bond issue, we have no community hub or gathering place.
Developers and businesses will look at us and say: ” They don’t want growth, change or progress. They don’t want to pay their share of moving MLT forward.
Who would want to invest their time and money in a city that just says NO to all new taxes, to growth, development and progress?
I am unwilling to allow negativity, distrust and” NO to all taxes” sentiment define the image of my community.
As a 20+ year resident of MLT, I really do hope that Prop 1 passes this time around.
Just LOOK at our downtown corridor. I’m not sure how anyone could be truly proud of it. Empty lots, dilapidated and empty buildings. Frankly, if DD Meats ever leaves, the entire downtown core will become a wasteland.
We need a useful and attractive downtown core that will set the tone and attract NEW BUSINESS, who in turn will pay taxes to the city, attract more people to downtown, and increase property values.
If us residents don’t show confidence in our city’s future, why would prospective incoming businesses/developers feel any confidence?