Homelessness

Ward Johnson

It must be nearing springtime as the city leaders are planting the fresh crop of lies and threats to coerce our votes to take what money from us they haven’t already taken in the past recent elections.

How unfortunate to live in a country as great as America where we vote with near-sighted decision-making skills that lower the price of production for luxury items, yet they still remain out of our budget and come up with other ways to do it cheaper.

Yet we don’t even look at the implications having just about every tangible item we use in our homes embossed with a MADE IN CHINA label. The same item that previously had read MADE IN USA. Our labor force wants more money for wages, so production is moved overseas.

Meanwhile the rest of the labor force is caught between very low-paying jobs in the service industry or sitting home on the couch wishing they could afford a public education that is no longer affordable.

A word of caution before marking your sample ballot or voting this spring: Remember the gas tax initiative that was going to knock off a significant amount of what we pay at the pumps last election? Then, all of a sudden, that very same initiative with the exact same wording became the scapegoat used to raise it even higher by claiming that this proposition would hamper response times by police and fire responding during our times of emergencies? Or that it would create a pothole repair mobile to repair all the potholes?

So, we voted to keep the high gas taxes which was what we wanted eliminated in the first place. And now they want to jack up our property taxes by quietly overturning Howard Jarvis’s Proposition 13 we overwhelmingly passed to keep our property taxes from turning into another government-owned revolving charge card!

A shout out with a huge attagirl goes out to our Long Beach City Councilwoman Suzie Price (3CD) for not caving into the colleagues on the City Council who are championing the fight to tax even more of our money for the homeless housing issues.

Thank you, Mrs. Price, for standing up to them. If people cannot afford to own, rent or share they need to look elsewhere.

Long Beach is not a haven, a vacant lot or some kind of hideout for these people and will not tolerate those who think it’s okay to rob our citizens who are already being held hostage to 10.5% sales tax.

How about the Long Beach Transit could help by issuing one-way bus passes to the international border with no return trip status clearly designated and hand them out to these unfortunate souls.

Maybe someone should point out to these “good Samaritans” who loathe handing the taxpayer’s hard-earned cash to try handing their over inflated salaries that seem to increase each time the Santa Ana winds start blowing.

It is election time on the City Council for Districts 2, 4, 6 & 8. Be sure to vote!

 

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