Dear Supervisor Kinsey:
Looking back one year at the roster of the Board of Supervisors and with my 81st birthday almost upon me I trust you will understand the urgency I feel to get something off my chest before it is too late.
Yes, the Measure B parcel tax passed by a generous two thirds majority in the November 8 election and I, who opposed the Homestead Measure A parcel tax in 2009 lost this time too, leaving the reasonable appearance that I’m just an old crank who opposes parcel taxes. Which is not true, Sir, just not true, and if you will bear with me for a couple sentences I will tell you why, and how that bears on the Evergreen Avenue project in HomesteadValley.
My professional career - that is, the employment period with the savings plan which provides a modest income in my retirement - lasted thirty one years with the California Department of Transportation, commencing December 1, 1960, when I believed that population growth and economic development were good and should be encouraged, and that freeways were the lubricant to a prosperous and happy future. I was foundering at the time in an interlude of insanity. Thus, when I saw your name conspicuously among our conspicuous leaders who in public “Proudly Support the HighSchool Parcel Tax RENEWAL” my heart was overcome with a deep and troublesome disappointment. I am not against parcel taxes, but the 3% per annum automatic increase boggles my comprehension of reality, which was forged at the last job I had before Caltrans, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
In the light of the consistently dreary economic news I could not in good conscience endorse Measure B and its 3% kicker and still claim sanity formyself. (Recall that Measure A had only a 2% per annum increase!) THAT iswhy we are on opposite sides of the parcel tax issue and I am terribly saddened that we are separated on that account.
But the question here is whether we are equally separated by the issue of Evergreen Avenue, which I believe is being rammed down our throats (or up our…) by the same inexorable grind of the wheels that just gave us MeasureB.
Thanks for listening, and best wishes always,
Ray Cook
