Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

 I try very hard to keep my budget balanced and pay my bills, so when I hear that a city employee is getting a substantial raise and the Wrangell City Assembly hasn't even passed a budget, I become concerned, especially when I see my Inner Harbor electricity bill skyrocket from $18.00 in the cold month of November to $42.63 in the warm month of April.

 Then I realize we have the highest sales tax in Southeast and that we may call this electrical overcharge wrongfully charged and done in a "silence of the night" at a closed to the public city workshop. Maybe we need to be forward looking at tidal or solar power as climate change takes hold. I don't know if the City of Wrangell has noticed the number of houses for sale because of the lack of jobs, but when I see how this city overlooks the concerns of the residents, say this absurd sound ordinance, I looked up the word ordinance: "an authoritative decree or direction from a government." But when I get a call out of the blue from Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore, who I serve with on the Friends of Library telling me I owe a bed tax, I wonder why. I am not a bed and breakfast, Air B&B or a short-term rental. They are trying to sell land. 

I saw this unfair taxation without allowing the people to have a voice when I lived in Juneau when the Cruise Industry was suing the city.

Loretto Jones