Seattle voters still have never seen a tax they didn’t like

Aug 6, 2014, 2:17 PM | Updated: 3:54 pm

KIRO Radio's Dori Monson says he can laugh because he's no longer a Seattle resident, but he doesn't understand Seattle voters' support of Prop. 1 for parks. (AP Photo/file)

(AP Photo/file)

Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

As predicted, it looks like Seattle voters have approved a new parks district that will mean massive new property taxes for the citizens of Seattle.

In the latest ballot count, Proposition 1, to create a park district in Seattle, is winning 52 to 48 percent.

But I wanted to give you just a couple of stats here, for the uninformed voters, or even the informed voters who might not have had all the information.

I went through and looked at Seattle Parks salaries today. Because they were doing all these sob stories, saying, oh we have to turn off the showers at Alki, we don’t have enough room for the elephants at Woodland Park. They found all these things people cared passionately about and they pretended this was about infrastructure and facilities and providing opportunities for the citizens of Seattle, and it’s not.

It was about maintaining an incredibly inefficient wasteful bureaucracy. You think of the Parks Department as being maybe a little more low-key, bucolic, about public service. No, it’s not.

They have 25 Seattle Parks employees making over $100,000 a year. You would think maybe one or two top managers would warrant that kind of pay, but no, it’s 25.

Then, I was going through the salaries further and I saw all these salaries $99K, $98K, $99K. It’s like they brought in a ton of salaries just under $100K so that critics like me would have to keep the number of six-figure Parks employees to just 25.

But the number of Seattle Parks employees making over $90,000 a year is 55. Then, if you drop it down to the $80,000 threshold, 106 Seattle Parks Department employees make more than $80,000 a year.

Frankly, I’m surprised they even have 106 full-time employees at the Seattle Parks Department, but 106 who make over $80,000 a year?

This is why they need a massive property tax increase. This is the big crime of government. They keep coming at us for more, more, more and they tell us it’s to feed the children, it’s to keep the parks open, it’s to provide for the needy.

No it’s not. It is to keep massive government bureaucracy scams going. That was the big downfall of Metro, and the voters of King County wisely said no we’re not going to vote for a gigantic Metro increase because it’s an inefficient bloated bureaucracy.

Seattle Parks is just that as well, but since it was limited to a Seattle-only vote and Seattle voters always say, tax us more, we want to pay more!

So congratulations to all the Seattle Parks employees. You get to keep your gigantic cushy jobs and your fat pensions that are completely out of whack with the private sector. You found more pigeons to feed the monster.

Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.