My Votes
Dear Editor: As it is soon to be voting season, I thought I would add my two cents.
I am voting for Mr. Paxton for mayor. I observed him in his role of city manager when I first came to Sitka and have been impressed ever since – he was the right person to lead our town through the difficult transition of the pulp mill closing, and I believe he is the right person to guide us through the merging of the hospitals and other issues facing Sitka.
For Assembly members I favor Brinnen Carter and Blossom Twitchell, both people I know and have worked with. I feel neither has an axe to grind nor special interests, other than to see Sitka through the current times and into the future.
I think all three school board candidates are capable and qualified.
There is no doubt that Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins is the man to return as our state representative, he is experienced, even-handed and works well with others. We need to keep him in Juneau to benefit all of us.
Thank you and don’t forget to vote. Jeff Budd, Sitka
In Response
Dear Editor: I would like to commend Karen Parker for her letter to the editor titled ‘‘Plastic Bags’’ published in the Sept. 11 issue of the Sentinel. I believe Ms. Parker’s comments to be a voice of reason in all this Bags of Change bullstuff.
I do hope I have the attention of the Bags of Change group and proponents. News flash: Your well-intentional efforts to reduce so-called ‘‘single-use’’ plastic bag usage have been subverted. I believe you have been intentionally duped to assist the City of Sitka in raising taxes and I will give you 500,000 reasons why. A half-million reasons every year why.
Not convinced you have been duped? Follow the logic.
The Bags for Change group sought to reduce so-called ‘‘single-use’’ plastic bags, correct? Their ideas included use of reusable shopping bags and perhaps a small fee of a few cents per bag for Sitkans who chose to use merchant provided bags. But, I don’t understand, because the merchant-provided bags are definitely not ‘‘single use’’ at my house. Then I hear the group has also proposed a small fee for the use of paper shopping bags. I wonder why? Paper is not plastic.
For the answer to that question, we fast-forward to the Sentinel article in the Sept. 12 issue, reporting on the city Assembly’s Sept. 11 passage of the fees. ‘‘The inclusion of paper bags was justified in the general interest of preventing waste.’’ What a crock of bullstuff this Assembly is trying to feed us! Again.
The same Sentinel article reported Sitka’s grocery store managers as saying they go through 2 million bags per year. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out: At the April 2020 fee of 25 cents per bag, times 2 million bags, the total comes to $500,000. Half a million dollars of your money, per year! Straight into the city General Fund. Keep in mind that amount doesn’t include bags from all the other merchants in town.
I don’t know of anyone who does not use the merchant supplied bags for another purpose. And I’m willing to bet there are a number of hypocritical ‘‘single-use’’ bag fee proponents. Those who do not reuse their tall kitchen garbage bags, wash and reuse their zip seal food and sandwich bags, or reuse the doggy poop bags the city provides. Kudos to those of you who do.
But this is not about the environment, bags, recycling or reusing. It’s all about a $500,000-per-year additional tax on Sitkans. Given the greed of the majority of the current Assembly, I am not surprised.
Wake up, neighbors.
Charles Wileman, Sitka
Plastic Bag Tax
Dear Editor: To address our solid waste problem with a bag tax is like fixing a broken leg with a Band-Aid. It won’t work and it won’t even make the patient feel better. We have a LOT of solid waste to be handled, and if people use paid-for Glad-type trash bags instead of grocery bags we will still be having just as many plastic bags to be disposed of.
There is a big picture here. Every day the small-business-killers like Amazon, Target, BestBuy, Wayfair, eBay, Walmart and Costco, who all sell their goods at cheap prices, send tons of cardboard, Styrofoam, plastic air pillows, plastic shipping bags, plastic containers, plastic jars and bottles and plastic strapping tape and wrapping, and much more with the goods they sell. Unlike us and our plastic bags, they don’t have to pay to handle that debris … we do! Our taxes pay to collect the shipping junk from all over Sitka and then pay tax money again to ship it off island … a cost to us not to the etailers! Seem wrong? It is! And these items are all far and away in greater volume and more damaging to the environment than our plastic bags which represent a pittance by comparison of burden and cost. Accordingly:
1.) I think it is irresponsible to make a financial decision on behalf of “the good of the environment” without considering first the actual dollars and cents cost of implementing the action.
2.) I think it is irresponsible and autocratic to use a tax levy to change people’s behavior without their agreement and without regard for the consequences, intended or otherwise.
3.) I do not believe the Assembly or any representative government body has the right to unilaterally “influence” or control consumers by manipulating them with their money “for their own good.”
4.) I think it is unfair to obligate the business community and the city administration to implement a bag tax without consideration of the demands of implementing and operationalizing this tax. I am referring to both financial and labor costs.
5.) I think it is unfair to obligate the business community to implement this bag tax along with already having to handle sales tax collection without regard for the added time and expense to the businesses.
6.) I think the Assembly should seriously address the matter of the tons of solid waste and toxic matter that is shipped onto this island, and then has to be shipped off again which is both harmful and expensive.
7.) I think the Assembly should make a plan and work toward a long-term solution like an incinerator instead of wasting our current resources on a bag tax.
Finally, I object to the manner and process used by the Assembly to expedite (ramrod) this bag tax through without sufficient notification to the community so that there could be a representative response to the proposal. I am recommending that the bag tax decision be postponed and made an item on a ballot so everyone has a vote on this matter.
Dr. Rob Parker, Sitka
