Letter to the Editor: SPU Acquisition Would Result in Tax on Water, Which is Morally Wrong

To the editor:

Sometimes a message is confusing. Take the Seattle Public Utilities Acquisition by the City of Shoreline.

The real question is what we value as citizens of our fair city.

Thirty years ago, when I first moved to Washington State, I was shocked to see the most regressive of taxes in place …a tax on food! Later, voters in this state decided it was not appropriate to tax food because food is a basic need.  I would like to make everyone realize that water too is a basic need, a need to survive, and to tax it is a very regressive tax.

As I write this on National Habitat Day, let us start to look closer to home at our neighbors and friends.

The real question that should be on the November 6th ballot should be: Do you approve of the City of Shoreline being in the business of providing and taxing water?

Mayor McGlashan stated at a City Council meeting in August 2012 that to break the ballot issue into two questions might confuse the voters, and we might vote the wrong way. (The tape is available on the City of Shoreline website.) We have options to elevate ourselves to a higher level.

To care for the citizens of our city in a better way, we should support the purchase of our water system by a public utility like Shoreline Water District, which does not tax water. 

This was the path our fair city was taking in 2006, and subsequently abandoned when a new city manager was hired.  At that point, a decision was made to pursue the purchase of the water system by the City of Shoreline; the water system thus becomes a taxing vehicle for the city.

Whether our taxes go to Seattle or Shoreline is a false choice that does not improve the quality of life in our city. We need a public utility that delivers, tax free and at the lowest possible cost, that which we all require to survive: WATER.

Taxing something that is needed to survive is morally wrong. As a result, I cannot support Proposition 1. If we start down this path, the bus gets rolling and is very hard to stop.

Karen Easterly-Behrens