Dear Editor,

The current tax increase plans at the Oakdale City Council meetings constitute a scam scheme against the town’s citizens who simply cannot afford the funds to be taken from them. The funds are not slight; they are significant … between one and two million dollars annually depending upon the percentage of increase. That will hurt us, and we will remember Thomas Jefferson’s “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Consider this sales tax increase plan of Clark & Peabody in the following light:

• A .5 percent increase in sales tax will require merchants to pay the city of Oakdale tax increased by another $1.2 million … A 1 percent increase will require the merchants to pay another $2.4 million, both of which are passed on to you and me to pay, of course.

• Don’t think your landlord who owns the home you live in will be stuck with this property tax. He will not because it is not property tax … it is a sales tax increase that you pay every time you buy anything except for some foods.

• Your new car. If you buy it in Eureka or Modesto or some city other than Oakdale, it will cost considerably less because those cities have not increased sales taxes … Right? Wrong, wrong. Get this for cruelty … because you live in Oakdale your new car would be registered in Oakdale and, therefore, you have to pay your new car’s sales tax to Oakdale at the new increased rate regardless of where you bought it.

• Your dream. Don’t dream that this ridiculous Godbe “political research” business will find that citizens don’t want this increased tax and it won’t be submitted to a ballot. I know Godbe too well from my Half Moon Bay experience and the Cabrillo Unified School District. Godbe has now moved out of Half Moon Bay.

• The $15,000 city council gave toward the scheme to increase your taxes … that’s a lot of money to waste you say. No, it isn’t. What’s a lot of money is when businesses throw up their hands and move.

Oakdale can be saved if city staff job positions and pension benefits are combed severely. But, thus far the five members of city council are all goo-goo eyed over people like Clark and Peabody who are destroying our town with more taxes. This forthcoming weekend (May 21 and 22) 70,000 visitors will be here for (yummy) the Chocolate Festival. Now, that is, indeed, revenue caused by touring invited visitors and is much better than new taxes.

So, thank you, Mayor Pat Paul, and Chamber of Commerce CEO Mary Guardiola.

Larry Kay