By now, voters have received the special election ballots for the school levies in the mail. Who doesn’t want to support kids and education?

But I felt bad. For the first time I couldn’t just check the “yes” box on a school levy without thinking. Property values in Port Townsend have skyrocketed in the past decade. Mine has tripled, and with it, the taxes. My property tax bill is now 80% of my mortgage payment. But so, too, the property tax revenues would have tripled. Where did all this increase in tax revenue go? While there has been inflation to consider in government budgets, it has not been 300% in ten years.

My water bill, which is layered with taxes, has tripled as well in ten years. With the age demographic in Port Townsend, a lot of the seniors are on fixed incomes. They are experiencing the same increases as my wife and I are. A solution for additional funding of the city might be to increase the sales tax percentage. Sales tax is a progressive consumption tax.

With the large amount of tourist spending in the city, the visitors could help us pay a share of maintaining our beautiful town.

It’s time to start thinking in a different way on taxation in our fair city for the welfare of its citizens.

Steve Kemper

Port Townsend