Cascade Council at it Regressive Best?

The regressive, anti-environment heart and soul of Cascade was on full display at city council last night. Watch the video if you don’t believe me. And keep in mind these actions are being taken in your name.

            For starters there was the perennial city/utility employee salary problem: utility workers have always earned more, and the reason Mayor Greg Staner gives for this they are worth more: their jobs valued higher, paid more. Inherently illogical, I argued, because city workers have a wider range of duties. More like pure snobbery: city workers have to dig the sewer lines and that is somehow different than digging electrical ones?

            Unfair, illogical and we know why—the utility has more $ than the city.

            No more decent is the 2% raise city workers got. In spite of the administrator informing council that inflation is running 2.8%.  This is how the middle class is disappearing before our very eyes.

            Like a propaganda machine or talking head the Mayor defends the seriously regressive garbage rates which the city voted to raise a dollar (12%). This means that single or couple households that garden, can, and put out less garbage are paying a far higher rate. That’s not the worst part, however: this regressive tax rewards waste, creating garbage and filling up the landfill, when the city should use rates to penalize that.

            The Mayor’s defense for this? Like some teenager doing what everybody is doing wrong, he says our rates are less than other cities. No less regressive!

            At the opposite end of Tyler Street new apartments are being constructed that have exacerbated the drainage problem down there (and the flooding residents along the river experience in peak events). The new driveways, roofs and patios cause more run-off and now the street needs curb and gutter, which it did not previously. The city ordinance only requires the developer to bring the street back to its original condition. Only now it needs curb and gutter because of the increased water flow. Guess who’s going to pay to solve a problem a developer created? (1^st two guesses don’t count!)

Unfair (Regressive) Garbage Charges?

You might want to call your Cascade City Council member and complain about them raising the garbage rates $1, which council will do the next meeting if it passes the 3rd reading.  The city administrator characterized the raise as "negligible," but in fact it is over 12% and very regressive.
Regressive is:  2, 3 or 4  residents pay less for generating more garbage per person than those citizens who grow a portion of their food, can, compose and/or employ other strategies to avoid creating garbage.
When my garbage/recycling containers were frozen to the ground from mid-January to the 1st of March I couldn't even move them to do so and they weren't totally full then.
Of course, it is more difficult to come up with a less regressive formula to penalize creating garbage and reward composting, canning etc. but if council wants to give the impression of being fair, that's what it needs to do.