SEQUIM — Shelley Taylor — formerly Lorena the blond spa owner on “General Hospital” from 1984 to ’86 — left Los Angeles for the Olympic Peninsula in spring 2004.
“I had my run as an actress,” said Taylor, who calls herself semi-retired.
She’d also been an activist for decades, organizing anti-graffiti efforts and otherwise cleaning up her neighborhood.
In Washington, though, she swore she wouldn’t get involved in local politics.
“I just want to be home in my jammies with my husband and my kitty cat, looking out at the mountains,” said Taylor, 55.
Taylor stayed out of local politics, but she was to get rather heavily involved this time in state politics.
Taylor, who appeared in television shows such as “Fantasy Island” and movies such as “Scarface,” spearheaded a campaign for predictable property tax increases that produced House Joint Resolution 4214 in this year’s Legislature.
HJR 4214 would have amended the state constitution to limit property tax increases to 1 percent per year.
A companion measure, Senate Joint Resolution 8219, was introduced in the state Senate.
November public forum
Last November, Taylor held a public forum on the idea at Sequim’s Pioneer Park. Property Owners for Predictable Tax Now was born.
Next Taylor got 24th District Reps. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, and Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, who represent Jefferson and Clallam counties, to sponsor the House bill, and it had a hearing in the state House of Representatives in January.
But it failed to gain enough support to make it out of the House Finance Committee.
The bill died last week.
Kessler, the House majority leader, said business and real estate interests came out against the change, which they said replaces fairness and uniformity in property values.
‘We made friends here’
One wouldn’t know the proposal went down to defeat from talking to Taylor.
Over lunch at the Old Mill Cafe in Carlsborg, she unleashed a torrential explanation of why she’s only begun to fight.
“We made friends here,” Taylor said.
She and her husband, Greg, a carpenter and fine-art photographer, met homeowners who have watched their property taxes rise 30 percent or more per year. Those homeowners spoke of a fear that the next property tax bill would force them to sell.
Property values in Jefferson and Clallam counties, Taylor found, were increasing steadily, and longtime residents who’d taken care to maintain their homes were being hit with pernicious tax increases.
“My friends and I said, ‘Let’s put on a show,”‘ Taylor recalled.
Or rather, “Let’s have a meeting.”
They would rally the people of the North Olympic Peninsula behind a ballot initiative that makes property tax increases predictable — from year to year property taxes would go up only 1 percent unless the property was sold, at which time the assessed value would be reset to that market value.
Had that meeting been a show, it would have been a smash hit.
