Meet the Candidates: LFP City Council Pos 4 : Jeff Johnson
Thursday, October 6, 2011
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| Jeff Johnson, LFP City Council Pos 4 |
Lake Forest Park has been my home for 28 years.
My children went to school here. I mobilized volunteers in our community when people needed help. And for over 20 years, I’ve built and grown my family-owned business that serves many of you.
I’m concerned that our City Council isn’t meeting citizen’s expectations. Last year, Proposition One was a wake-up call. Like 78% of you, I voted against it.
Instead of making tough budget decisions, the Council placed Proposition One on the ballot. They expected us to bear the burden by increasing the city’s portion of our property taxes by 38% in the first year alone.
Let’s restore fiscal responsibility, assure public safety and prevent flooding while protecting streams.
The Council needs to know what LFP citizens like you and me are thinking. So let’s put an optimistic and experienced LFP citizen on the Council.
I can be that Councilperson.
Email: jeffjohnsonlfp@hotmail.com
Phone: 206-364-2979
Posts
2 comments:
"Instead of making tough budget decisions, the Council placed Proposition One on the ballot."
What specifically will you do differently if elected? The City's budget is an open document, so I would expect a serious candidate to have an answer for this. I'm looking for specifics, not generalities.
Hey Aaron,
I'm not sure this comment area is the best place for a long and detailed answer, so I'll try and keep it brief - while hopefully giving you some of the specifics you seek.
1. I would like to go through the entire budget with the council and mayor with a four-level rating system: 1) critical for survival, 2) critical for success, 3) an influential factor, 4) not an influential factor. We would rank all spending items. Anything that ranks a 1 or 2 would get funding. If there's any extra money that keeps us under our current revenue, we'd give half to some other projects and half would go to the reserve fund.
2. I've heard several of the incumbents and their endorsees say that the people don't want their taxes raised. That's a statement of fact based on the results of Prop. 1. What I don't hear them saying is they will oppose any revenue increase.
I don't want to cut our taxes, per se, but I don't want to consider a tax increase until we've proven we can keep spending just under current revenues - which I believe is possible.
3. Some of the people, and their appointed commission and task force volunteers, who brought us Prop 1 say if we don't raise revenues, we'll have to cut essential services. That is simply a threat.
The fact is that until we can cut out funding for non-essential studies like a proposed roundabout at the end of Brookside Blvd or thousands of wasted dollars to update the city website (it could have been done for much less), talking about cuts to our police force or city infrastructure is nothing more than a scare tactic directed at the voters.
[One other note on the website: by spending so much on that, we cut out the Town Crier - an essential source of news for many senior citizens without Internet access. We could bring that back and run it at a profit by simply allowing advertisers - which our city's retail and out-of-home service businesses would consider a community service.]
As I said, I don't want to get too long in a comment area. If you go to my website, specifically this page - http://jeffjohnsonforcouncil.com/goals-and-priorities - you will find more. You can also go to facebook.com/jeffjohnsonforcouncil. I'm always posting updates with helpful links or more thoughts on the issues.
Also, if you want to email me directly, I would be happy to continue this conversation with you (or anyone else reading this). I can be reached at jeffjohnsonlfp@hotmail.com. Otherwise, I hope to see you in the audience at the Oct 18 candidate forum at the Commons.
Thanks so much for taking time to share the question. This is just the kind of conversation that has made this campaign so much fun for me.
Be well,
Jeff
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