Do you have an opionion? Your letters 10-5

Before even trying to tackle a $15 to $20 million deficit based on Mayor Bernero’s worst-case scenarios, City Hall decided to use fear mongering and extortion to scare voters into passing an outrageous 26% to 31% tax hike and Headlee override as property values plummeted by an average of more than 10% this year.

 

Instead of threatening to cut 60 police and 60 fire fighters, why doesn’t Bernero propose that elected officials take a pay cut, or to stop wasting our money on rain gardens, the Faith-based Office, Sister Cities, inefficient and costly antique street lights, flowers and beautification projects, sponsorship of festivals and block parties, ads for nonprofits and community organizations, facade improvements, bike lanes, traffic calming devices (roundabouts, speed bumps, raised pedestrian crosswalks, traffic islands, etc.), brick pavers, river trails, boat launches and fishing piers, benches like the ones in No Man’s Land at I-496 and Cedar street, illegal spy cameras in neighborhoods, $2 million-plus per year subsidies of LEPFA, the Lansing Center and Cooley Stadium, a $25,000 junket to India, ad nauseam? Lansing is the only Michigan city besides Detroit with more than one police precinct. 

 

Voters should not be duped. Don’t fall for the on-line ballot proposal millage calculator that UNDERESTIMATES next year’s taxes “with and without the 4-mill increase.” The calculator doesn’t include the 1.5 mills approved by voters in Nov. for the Lansing School District’s Sinking Fund to repair schools, which will be added to this summer’s taxes. Also, the City can and will legally levy 4.8308 mills (not just 4 mills) some time in the next 5 years. $400,000 of the tax increase is going to TIFA and the Brownfield Authority, which is on top of the $8.5 million we’ve been told will be generated by the tax hike.

 

Don’t fall for City Hall’s lies, extortion, fear mongering and hocus pocus. If you do, you’re going to get burned. Please read ALL of the ballot language, not just the bold print. The truth is buried in the light or “fine print” on the ballot.

 

VOTE NO on this pig-in-a-poke on May 3!

 

John Pollard, Treasurer

No More Taxes Committee (The registered opposition to the millage increase)