AgdaPkt 2018-07-23 Joint SA PFA - Laserfiche WebLink

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CLK-Maria Vazquez From: CLK-Pamela Aguilar Sent: Monday, July 23, 2018 8:43 AM To: CLK-Maria Vazquez Subject: FW: Your brochure on increasing city sales tax From: Kenneth L. Dulaney Sent: Friday, July 20, 2018 7:37 PM To: GRP -City Council <council()redwoodcity.org> Cc: Subject: Your brochure on increasing city sales tax Hi., REECENED JUL 2 3 2018 City of Redwo—oc >C:Ly City CEerk First of all, thank you for all the good work you are doing to make Redwood City more vibrant and livable. It is a more pleasant place to live than when we moved here in 1989. Linda and I wanted to respond to the brochure we received today regarding the City's precarious financial position and solutions to resolve it. We wanted to respond by email since we know that he upcoming council meeting will be overcrowded. I realize that many of the problems may be due to previous administration actions before you were members of the Council when those members thought little about he long term consequences of their actions. However, we are against raising the sales tax. Governments continue to fall into financially difficult states and find taxes as the only answer. At some point, you just have to say no. Here are suggestions that we would like you to consider: 1) There should not be services for those who are not here legally. Instead push that to the State or County. We must pay attention to our poor first. We are not against immigrants, but we realize that those are optional services, not a necessity. 2) We must consider reforming the pension plan for public safety workers who retire at an early age and for City workers. We should raise the retirement ages and gradually convert these pension plans to 401K plans that the end user can manage themselves. We must keep our police at the same level or higher, but we also do not need to make them independently wealthy when many of us live to 80 or 90 years of age. You should gather the workers and tell them that something must be done, or their pensions will not survive them; they have to be part of the solution, not just say that they are entitled to money that is no longer there. 3) While I am happy the City has increased housing, but the City increasingly has a voter base that is transient and does not have the long-term interest of the City in mind like Linda and I do. To this point, I think there should be a head tax on a rental unit. Don't increase sales taxes. Linda and I will go more to San Carlos for dining and to other towns for shopping. This is not what you want as you are adding more retail to downtown. You don't want this to happen. Ken and Linda Dulaney