[CPEO-MEF] Spokane County (WA) defeats tax for Fairchild Air Force Base buffer zone

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Spokane County rural voters deny Proposition 1
Fairchild measure fails in low-income areas

Mike Prager
Spokane  Spokesman-Review
November 7, 2013


Efforts to raise property taxes to buy homes and land around Fairchild Air Force Base dimmed Wednesday as “no” votes piled up – especially in rural and poorer areas of the county.

“They just couldn’t afford to do it,” Airway Heights Mayor Patrick Rushing said of voters in two lower-income neighborhoods near the base, which rejected the measure.

Spokane County Proposition 1 asked voters to increase property taxes by 6.3 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, costing the owner of a $200,000 home an extra $12.60 a year. The tax would be collected for up to nine years and would raise $18 million to buy seven mobile home parks on the south side of Airway Heights and relocate residents in the 188 units there.

Moving people out of Fairchild’s “accident potential zone” at the northeast end of the base runway was seen as a way to blunt concerns about encroachment on the base.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/nov/07/rural-voters-deny-prop-1/

For the associated editorial, see
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/nov/08/editorial-cant-afford-to-lose-sight-of-protecting/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
LSiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org




_______________________________________________
Military mailing list
Military@lists.cpeo.org
http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/military-cpeo.org