I compliment the Clallam County commissioners for giving voters a say on the proposed sales tax increase.
I will vote against it for the following reasons.
The tax increase is supposed to raise $1.1 million annually.
The county could free up $2 million annually by reducing through attrition the number of employees back to 2014 levels, plus an increase proportional to county population growth, according to figures supplied by Clallam County.
From 2014 to 2016, full-time-equivalent county employees increased by 8 percent, while county population increased by only 1.3 percent.
I, for one, found the level of services provided by the county in 2014 quite adequate and would be happy to see the number of county employees grow no faster than population.
As inflation raises prices and population increases, the county already collects proportionally higher sales tax revenues without any increase in tax rates.
If we vote to also increase the sales tax rate, we hit ourselves with a double whammy.
Seattle now has a sales tax of 10.1 percent.
This did not happen at once but is the result of multiple increases over time.
In 1986, Germany had a sales tax of 11 percent.
Now it is 19 percent.
This also happened gradually over time.
Where do we want to end up?
If we vote down the latest proposed sales tax increase, juvenile and family services will not go away.
It will just force county government to fund these worthy services and balance the budget by other means, probably by partially scaling back through attrition the recent disproportional increase in county employees.
Kaj Ahlburg,
Port Angeles