Johnson: How it all looks to me
I find it very interesting that between May 2 and May 26 — as I write this letter — there have been exactly 1,478 property value protests officially filed in Pitkin County over the property tax valuation increases in the county for this year according to the property tax protest log on the Pitkin County site: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10TnBNTrm3pCGU8NRNOzZVR2PGFUfs5TYkbKzV7h_iKk/edit#gid=0.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that certainly seems like an awful lot of protests. It adds up to an average of over 60 per day since the valuations for this year were issued.
At a time when so many in the private sector seem to be struggling, it seems like the public sector is thriving. I would like to get an explanation from Deb Bamsberger — as well as the Pitkin County commissioners — regarding how many paid positions within Pitkin County have grown in the past three years while those of us who pay their salaries find life to be more challenging these days.
Because it certainly seems to be a much larger injection of government into the private lives of citizens since COVID — trying to regulate so much of our lives — than we we ever had in the past. Seems to be symptomatic of what’s going on all around the country.
Perhaps someone at Pitkin County can explain to us the bang for our buck that we are getting? And I hope it includes more spending for essential infrastructure, such as budgets for first responders and ICU beds, since the lack of ICU beds was used repeatedly to shut down hard-working folks just trying to make a living in Pitkin County during COVID.
Yes, property values in Pitkin County have been driven up obscenely by the rich and shameless who have paid obnoxious amounts of money for property here the past few years. But so much of Pitkin County policy has put so much burden on the working class — people who actually work hard for their money instead of those who make a fortune by just moving money around — that their policies have become as much of a problem as what they are supposedly trying to prevent.
Working folks deserve an explanation.
David Johnson
Redstone
