— from Cindy Wolf —
The future is coming. I am running for County Council to meet it with a good plan in place, not just a list of projects generated in reaction to current circumstances. When my daughter has children, I want them to be able to look around the islands and know that I was thinking of them when I cast my votes.
But we have practical challenges to meet, especially around housing. We must find ways for working islanders to buy affordable homes. We live in a beautiful place the world wants to visit. We need to house seasonal workers to staff our tourist-dependent small businesses. But we must receive tourists in ways that keep our rural lifestyle intact.
I am running to ensure your tax dollars are carefully spent, with the future in mind. Public spending should be in the public interest, to improve our environment, and our island quality of life. I want to make certain every penny we spend takes our carbon footprint, our future climate, and our economic health into consideration.
There are very real possibilities for reducing our carbon emissions and the need for expensive infrastructure. For example, right now we could explore public-private partnerships for kelp farms that sequester carbon, provide jobs, and even generate electricity. In the future, if we plan properly and have good regulations in place, there could be drones capable of bringing cargo to our airports and fleets of self-driving electric taxis so visitors don’t have to bring their individual cars. We need to be creative in our thinking and our planning.
For the past three years I have served as Vice Chair of the San Juan County Democratic Central Committee, working to make sure all the voices in the room get heard. In 2017 I helped found Orcas Women’s Coalition. We have worked together to pass several school levies, draft a county ordinance, and elect some wonderful candidates who now serve as state legislators, judges, and port commissioners.
I look forward to meeting as many of you as I can and I hope you will consider voting for me.
Given that we live in one of the wealthiest places in Washington state, how about promoting a wealth tax for San Juan County, with the proceeds to go toward affordable housing for low- and middle-income folks and families?
Most wealthy folks have a home on the islands but are domiciled elsewhere. It seems legally difficult to place a tax on assets outside the county such as Bill Gates’ Microsoft shares or Oprah’s home in Santa Barbera. How would you set a value on private businesses such as the grocery, pharmacy or hardware store? An excavation company may have millions of dollars in equipment assets. Are you going to tax families that have lived on the islands for generations and happen to hold valuable real estate?
The tight housing market is the only thing preventing even more rapid development. If we could readily house more construction workers, there’s essentially no stopping the near immediate conversion of the ferry-serviced islands into paved-over exurb communities dependent on trucked in food, and seasonal tourists in search of an adult Disneyland.
The County has no authority to impose “wealth” taxes. The County has no authority to impose an income tax.
An ad valorem tax on real estate is a form of wealth tax.
Taxes on property within the County are not what folks mean when they speak of a “wealth” tax. We already have real property taxes here. It’s a far different thing to reach accumulated wealth, especially that of persons who do not have a principal residence here.