Ideas for encampment
Regarding the homeless encampment near the Clarkston Walmart: Put up the big tent and bring in a couple of vault toilets like the U.S. Forest Service or Army Corps of Engineers use. They haul them around on semi-trailers.
Add a couple of dumpsters, and I am pretty sure one can lease a shower trailer from somewhere.
Kerry Moser
Colton
Just another tax
Headline: “Asotin County commissioners mandate county spending cutbacks.”
Yeah, that didn’t happen, and it won’t. You’ll never see that headline.
Instead, the headline was “Asotin County abruptly raises sales tax.”
Commissioners Brian Shinn, Chuck Whitman and Chris Seubert said things like, “We don’t have any choice”; that the county is running “... pretty lean and mean”; and “Again, this is probably not all we have to do.”
Voters weren’t asked for permission because the Washington Legislature opened a loophole you could drive a county through.
One excuse was the county negotiated a 10% salary increase. Businesses that must do this pay for it by cutting expenses or improving productivity.
Asotin County doesn’t consider either of those options. Why should they care?
Unhelpful was the implication, “You think this hurts, just wait until the assessor gets around to reevaluating your home or business for property taxes.”
Unhelpfully, the county didn’t communicate with the city of Clarkston before acting on the increase, or respond to questions from the mayor. City businesses provide the majority of county sales tax revenue.
Failure to communicate is typical of city-county government interaction. The commissioners really don’t care what the city thinks. This isn’t the first demonstration of that.
Empowering governments to be able to raise taxes without asking voters for permission guarantees just one thing: They’ll raise taxes, or think up new ones. Among other examples is the stormwater fee; in reality, another tax.
Yet another incentive for county consumers to spend their money in Idaho.
Rick Rogers
Clarkston
Enemies of the U.S.
In response to John Webb’s letter to the editor, Donald Trump is indeed a Nazi sympathizer who has expressed his admiration for him as well as other authoritarians like Kim Jung Un, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. All are enemies of the United States.
Trump’s past actions, absurd lies and declarations as well as his stated intention of ruling like a dictator, place him squarely in the camp of fascists. The fact that you and others blindly support him in light of 91 indictments, including insurrection against the U.S. and theft of highly classified documents, makes me question your patriotism.
Read “Fascism: A Warning” by the late Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, if you can’t figure out where this country will be heading if Trump worms his way back into office. It’s a real eye-opener.
Patrice Yeatter
Kooskia
