I just opened an envelope from the City of Seattle and find a letter entitled "Important Information Regarding your Utility Bill." I read it and discover that the Washington Supreme Court has ruled that the City, for decades, illegally charged water customers for the cost of fire hydrants and related piping. According to the Court, providing fire hydrants is a governmental function that should be financed through general tax revenues. It cannot legally be financed through a surcharge to a fraction of the population who pay water bills.
Reading on, I discover we who have paid this illegal charge will get a refund this spring. The letter ends at the bottom of the page and is "signed" by the Acting Director of Seatlle Public Utilities. Wow! Unbelievably, the City has owned up to its illegal gains and will refund me! Happy, I am deciding what to do with the letter (recycle or file it), when I notice there is some more verbiage on the back of the letter.
I turn it over, and read that one month ago, the City Council passed an ordinance, which the Mayor signed, that will tack a 10.2% surcharge on my water bill for the next 1.75 years. The Ordinance authorized the surcharge "to provide revenue to make refunds to water ratepayers . . . ." So now I believe it. The tyrannical, lying City government illegally charged me for years and years, and rather than pay me back for just two of those years, as the Supreme Court ordered it to do, it will steal more of my money and use that to "pay" me back.
Mayor Nickels and the members of the City Council who voted for this ordinance - you disgust me. You are thieves, and you are liars, and you can't even "look me in the face" as you lie to me; you have hide it on the back page of a letter so that hopefully, very few of us will ever read it.
Posted by 6p01156f3d6e9a970b at March 23, 2009 09:00 AM | Email ThisI hope you at least go to the council directly and confront them and make them feel at least uncomfortable.
They are a mini-version of the democrats at the national level; one crazy outrage after another of weird, rip-off behavior.
Posted by: Michele on March 24, 2009 12:48 PMHow dare the taxpayers sue their lords and masters.
What I am wondering is where is the judge in all of this. Surely this violates the ruling, is contemptuous of the court's judgment, and should get slapped down.
Of course I suppose it is possible that the judge is a lib who hated making the ruling in the first place, but was forced to by black letter law. Then this kind of out would be just PEACHY.
Disgusted.
Hairy
Posted by: Hairy Buddah on March 25, 2009 07:59 PM