The latest statewide survey of property taxes finds that 34 of the state’s 39 counties and 19 of 22 major cities limited annual property tax increases 1 percent, reported Dan Zarelli of the Washington Policy Center. Too bad Kitsap County isn’t one of them.

Kitsap County, in fact, has the 10th highest rate of property tax increase between 1998 and 2002, not including the County’s latest proposed increase, of 21.09 percent. In 1991 this County had “Governmental Funds” budget of $99,209,628. By 2002 we have a budget of $296,327,637 — almost 300 percent in 10 years. What is the new budget going to be? And what of the “surplus”?

Looking into the 2002 published budget numbers, found on the web, I see that our Commissioners expected a shortfall of $53,083,616.00 and yet there seems to be no end to the creation of new ways to spend money. The 2002 budget has not been updated since March of this year, so I am not sure where we stand in reality. The proposed budget is not published at all.

During the past year I have read about all of the land use planning, public events, highly-paid consultants, $400,000 Lydar scanning of the County, $1,000,000 software acquisition for DCD, lawsuits predicated by the County’s land use decisions, and yet none of these expenditures have come to fruition. The County has lost the lawsuits, 4(d) has been dropped, the Speak Outs fizzled to a quiet grumble and DCD has more people than ever, even with the new $1,000,000 computerized system in place.

Recently a notice in The Sun invited artists to submit proposals (up to $50,000) for art to be used in a new $22,000,000 building the County has planned for next year. Oh, did they forget to mention that? The last building plan, the Bremerton Government Building, cost us close to $500,000 just in the planning expenses, no less the legal costs, before the idea was thrown out by the courts.

So now the County wants to drop the 1 percent property tax limitation that the voters in this State approved and increase the amount another 6 percent. You might notice an incredible lack of information as to why. What we do read about is that IF we just give them this tiny increase (quoted in inconsequential dollars per thousand) then we can retain our critical services. It is like a magician waving a red scarf in his right hand while pulling the dove from the box with his left. The real question is why do our Commissioners continue to spend millions of dollars of tax money on their personal whims without any limitation while critical services are the first items to be cut?

I am calling upon the Commissioners to publish the full 2002 budget to date to let people know what has been spent and what the new proposed budget is so that we can understand what they have up their sleeves. Let us know how much was spent by the Prosecutor’s office on the Monssano case, the Ross case, the many other legal entanglements caused by their personal decisions.

Explain how much we really spend on salmon and explain to us why they are more important than our children. Let us see why the County continues to increase its staffing at an average income of more than three times what the average Kitsap County citizen earns. We are on the threshold of a major war, we have struggled with a difficult economy and the State has the worst unemployment rate in the Nation. STOP!

Our County has spent thousands of dollars on public meetings, staff, supplies, committees, consultants and surveys to prove that our citizens want to live in a beautiful rural setting, not stacked into Bremerton high-rise condos. Now that we have that understood, stop the spending on Smart Growth, and give us some Smart Government.

Jan Oleksiak
Bremerton.