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 HOT NEWS Good afternoon. Please pass along this message to all your Modesto friends. If you read page 19 of this year’s city budget, you will read that the mayor intends to put ANOTHER one-half cent sales tax on the ballot in November 2009. That’s right, after endorsing Measure S for “safer streets”, the Mayor will put an ADDITIONAL sales tax hike for “safer neighborhoods”. Boy, if we just keep taxing ourselves, we will be REALLY safe. Your Stanislaus Taxpayers Association needs your help. Let us look at what this mayor and city council has done in the last 6 years: 1. Doubled your water rates. Do you have better water? Have they built any new water facilities? What are they doing with that money? 2. Sold $46 MILLION dollars in water bonds. Have they built any new facilities? What are they doing with that money? 3. Voted to double your sewer rates. Do you have better sewers? Have they built any new facilities? Where is that money going? 4. Raised the salaries of EVERY city employee, some by over 25%. 5. Fired a city manager who was paid $175,000 and hired a new city manager who is being paid $225,000. 6. Raised the pay of every city cop by at least 17%. We have a higher crime rate now than ever. 7. After they raised the cop’s pay, they eliminated 50 police positions. 8. Raised every city firefighter’s pay by at least 17%. 9. After raising firefighter’s pay, they closed a fire station, and eliminated 12 firefighter positions. Now, they want to close another fire station. 10. They have outsourced, cut services, closed down windows and services at city hall, and generally reduced every city service. 11. The most outrageous thing they did was give 3 OIL COMPANIES a TAX REBATE amounting to over $2,500,000 a year!!! We think your city council has done a lousy job with the $330,000,000 they already get in tax revenues. Now, they want you to raise your current sales tax from 7.375% to 7.875%, promising to spend more money on street maintenance. Next year they want you to raise the sales tax to 8.375%, “to pay for more cops”. They say the new tax will generate $16 Million tax dollars, and they would hire 100 new cops. That means they plan to pay these cops $160,000 a year!!! To summarize, your city council wants you to pay for their terrible decisions. They buy the unions’ vote by paying ridiculously high salaries and benefits, cut city services to pay for it, and then demand that you increase your taxes to pay for what they should have provided. Do not forget they are giving away millions in sales taxes to the oil companies. Are you going to let them get away with that? If you want to fight them, join the S.T.A in this fight. Support us with what ever contribution you can afford. We will continue the fight. Just message me for our address. Thank you very much, Dave Thomas and the Executive Committee of the S.T.A.
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Opinion 
