King County property tax is getting out of control

Another day, another property tax for King County homeowners &#8212 and it’s starting to get out of control even if I think it’s for a worthy cause. In this case, the worthy cause is to help children.

Specifically, this would be a six-year levy that would go to early childhood development and intervention services, The Seattle Times reports. It’s being championed by King County Executive Dow Constantine.

The tax would generate money funneled primarily into expanded prenatal and early-childhood services. It also gives $19 million for homelessness prevention and aid for schools to combat childhood obesity and behavior problems.

But it’s not going to any specific program; it’s going to services the county offers, making the exact funding a bit of a mystery.

“There are a lot of human services and public-health challenges that would be reduced if people were able to get off to the best start,” Constantine said.

This is expected to generate about $392 million in total revenue. It’ll cost a homeowner an average of $56 a year for the next six years. If this was the only tax you’d get hit with, then it wouldn’t be a big deal.

But you keep getting hit with taxes to fund things you may not use, voted in by people who don’t even own homes.

And at some point, you have to say “no” &#8212 that you can’t keep making it so expensive to buy and maintain a home in Seattle.

Part of why King County is doing this is because they’re expected to have a $75 million deficit by 2021. So why not raise $392 million to cover the deficit and then some?

The problem here is King County is refusing to adhere to reasonable budgets and they aren’t willing to deal with their budgeting problem. We give them money every single year and they’re not spending it efficiently.

And they know they’re not &#8212 the reason they’re not is because they don’t have to. They know that they can keep taking money away from you each time because they’re asking activist voters to push through their activist programs.

This isn’t one of them, but I’m going to vote “no” when asked in November because I just don’t trust them after how much they’ve lied to us in the past and mismanage our money.

Lying about Metro bus service was the last straw for me. I’m normally someone who is fine paying more &#8212 in this case, I’m not a homeowner so I wouldn’t be paying directly &#8212 but I’ll pay more for smart, common sense programs. I’m not giving a dime more in tax money to King County until they apologize for lying about Prop 1 and Metro and commit themselves to properly spending our money.

Sorry, I’m out.