April 9, 2009

After my rebuttal to Jeff Golden appeared in the Tidings on March 31, I received a call from Jeff who “had a beef” about my characterization of him as not working hard. So I placed an apology in both the Tidings and the Sneak Preview. In that apology, I mentioned that I was upset that he referred to cranky restaurant owners, and he also demonized Realtors.

The next day I got another call, this time on my answering machine, from a perplexed Jeff Golden who couldn’t understand how I thought he was demonizing Realtors. Here is my response, which I just e-mailed to him this morning.

Hi Jeff,

I got your phone message the other day. In response to your question about why I thought you were demonizing Realtors in your article on the sales tax on food, here is the reasoning behind my opinion:

1. I was very involved in both the first election, which passed by 9% in March 1993, and the repeal effort, which lost by .05% in November 1993. I do not remember a single Realtor ever becoming a part of the process. Maybe someone showed up to speak against the sales tax at a City Council meeting who just happened to be a Realtor, but as a group they were mostly silent. The Board of Realtors might have come out with an official statement, but so did a whole lot of other organizations.

2. Listing Realtors as part of the “cranky” was a thinly veiled attempt to marginalize the opposition. If you could only prove that it was cranky restaurant owners and selfish Realtors who opposed the tax, you could more easily portray yourself, your ex-wife and all the other supporters of the sales tax as the saviors of mankind.

3. By inferring that the Realtors were only concerned with “reducing the inventory of privately owned property,” you portrayed them as selfish, self-serving people only concerned with the bottom line.

4. Your ploy to marginalize the opposition was also a subtle message sent to everyone in town: “If you don’t play ball and support an extension of the sales tax on food, you will be branded as cranky and selfish.”

* * * * *

I have already proven that the sales tax on food costs this community at the minimum $9 million a year in lost revenue (re-read my commentary in the Tidings if you have time). I understand where the supporters are coming from. They want the tourists from California to help them with their sewer rates. After all, when we go to California we help pay for theirs with a sales tax.

The same argument cannot be used for the Southern Oregon region. You pooh-pooh the argument that people in Medford and elsewhere are boycotting Ashland. You refer to it as “poetic license,” and I think it admirable that you place your head in the sand and refuse to believe it. If I thought you were insensitive to the plight of small business owners in town, the ones who drive this economy, the ones who employ our children and neighbors, the ones who contribute tons of money every year to every charity imaginable, then my opinion of you would not be very high.

I encourage you to take a stand and not support the extension of the sales tax on food. It will make this community more economically viable and provide the City with a higher tax base to adequately fund their necessary programs.

The $700,000 we lose from tourists can surely be found somewhere else. People in Ashland are paying $1.1 million a year on this sales tax. Transferring it to sewer rates is actually more fair because then EVERYONE helps pay semi-equally. If you don’t eat out in Ashland, you are paying NOTHING, while some of your neighbors are paying a lot.

How can you support such an unfair proposition? It’s not very liberal of you. It’s merely convenient. Get with it, Jeff; you can do it. Break out of that politically correct mold you’ve created for yourself and do the right thing.

Curtis