Initiative 1033 will help control spending

I’d like to respond to the mayor’s recent guest column urging voters to reject Initiative 1033.

The mayor claims that this initiative “takes away our local control” which “prevents Redmond from protecting our quality of life and punishes the city for our conservative fiscal policies.”

This is complete nonsense. The city continues to spend money at a breakneck pace, giving its workers significant pay raises this year during a severe economic downturn in which thousands of employees of Redmond businesses lost their jobs, and tens of thousands had their pay and benefits either frozen or cut.

The pay increases enacted just this year will cost the city an additional $1.38 million dollars in 2009 alone. How the mayor can call this conservative financial planning is beyond me.

It is precisely this type of behavior on the part of those entrusted with our tax dollars that I-1033 is meant to prevent.

If our public officials were truly being fiscally conservative, then there would be no need to enact I-1033. The initiative simply limits the rate of increase in government spending, at a time when average personal incomes for most people are flat if not falling. Uncontrolled government spending is unsustainable, and if our elected officials cannot be trusted to limit spending based upon the taxpayers’ ability to pay, then it’s up to us taxpaying voters to put a stop to it.

JP Panesko, Redmond

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