By Highlands Community Council
It seems that City of Renton “officials” don’t seem to care about silt running into streams.
While they may argue it is summertime, we would argue that with the dry weather we’ve had the ground is getting harder and one big rain will was everything into the stream.
The City of Renton seems to have a double standard here. Private citizens are required to put up silt fences but yet developers are not.
Here’s an e-mail from Claudia Donnelly sent to us:
There are two new houses going in close to Greenes Stream above me. No mitigation required by the planner! I have the plat document that says:
“To ensure that disturbance of the wetland and buffer does not occur during and after construction, the ERC placed a mitigation measure on the project that silt fencing be installed around the wetland, creek and associated buffers during construction and permanent fencing be installed after construction”.
The City of Renton has decided that no silt fences are required. Last year, when my husband and I added an room onto our house, we were required by DDES to put up a silt fence even though the stream is 60 feet away from our house.
Renton — like I’ve said before — doesn’t care about the environment………..
Claudia
By Highlands Community Council
RENTON, Wash. (AP) - Officials from The Boeing Co. and the city of Renton plan to sign a 40-year lease for the aerospace company to use Renton Municipal Airport, next to Boeing’s 737 assembly plant.
A city news release said the signing ceremony will take place Wednesday.
Read the rest of the story at Renton.KOMONews.com.
By Highlands Community Council
Posted by Katherine Long at the Seattle Times.
Interim Renton Fire Chief Mark Peterson has been appointed permanently to the chief’s position, where he will oversee the city’s fire and emergency-services department, effective immediately, said Renton Mayor Denis Law.
A 30-year veteran of the department, Peterson has served as interim chief since January.
Read the rest of the story here.
By Highlands Community Council
Those of you that have issues with the City of Renton spending money advertising for Google, take a look at this story.
And by the way, the city still has the Google logo on their home page. Is Google writing them a check for this? Would they do the same for Comcast or Verizon?
Could the City of Renton be in breach of contract with Comcast? Hmmm.
By Highlands Community Council
Uh, Mr. Pietsch. How about giving the little guy a tax break? The City of Renton continually sides with big developers and big business but RARELY gives the little guy a tax break.
The tax rebate on utility bills that we helped push through was rescidended by our mayor. Maybe our Renton City Council could give us some tax and fee breaks and not just big monopolies like Google.
Are they really trying to woo Google into helping fill all the empty office space at The Landing? Only time will tell.
And for those of you that think Tacoma’s “Click” network is the answer. Remember that taxes are subsidizing that network. Get ready for more taxes if this happens. You may even be forced to pay taxes on Internet service even if you choose not to have it at your home. (Yes, there are still some people who choose not to have Internet or TV.)
From the Seattle PI and Renton Reporter.
Renton has thrown its hat into a national competition to convince Google it’s the perfect testing ground for its new fiber optic network.
Google Fiber for Communities hopes to deliver Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than average to a few choice cities in the United States.
In hopes to prompt community involvement, the City of Renton has temporarily rebranded its logo in a Googlized, multi-colored font.
Read the rest of the story at the Seattle PI.
By Highlands Community Council
The state Democrats and Governor Gregoire are doing it to us again.
They passed a bill that will allow the Renton School District to increase our property taxes once again through levies.
There’s also a dirty little secret that the Renton School District does not want you to know. What is it? We’ll let the cat out of the bag in a future post. Stay tuned.
Many people that vote for these levies may not realize that it directly affects their rent. Just because you live in an apartment or rental home, the property taxes for that building will go up. You may not see the increase until your lease is up, but you will feel the impact.
Maybe the Renton School District should figure it out that building new schools does not always improve test scores.
The Renton School District needs to get a backbone and start disciplining kids that act up in class. They should ban cell phones from being used during class and be thankful to the parents of private and home school kids that are paying for education TWICE! Once through their property taxes and again through their tuition and school supplies they must purchase. They are literally giving the Renton School District thousands of dollars per month for services they don’t use.
Renton used to have good schools. Many families in the late 60’s and early 70’s moved here to get away from the Seattle school district. A trend that continues today. Just look at the enrollment numbers for the Seattle School district.
Back in 80’s the Renton School District even closed some neighborhood schools due to declining enrollment.
They have now replaced just about every elementary school in the City of Renton but yet the test scores don’t seem to show any improvement. Where’s the problem?
The problem is we have a group of people running the City of Renton and the Renton School District that don’t care about the people, they only care about their power.
Remember this when the next election rolls around. Do your homework. Be certain you understand where your elected officials stand on issues important to you and don’t simply vote for them because “things seem to be going okay”.
- Look at your property taxes. They’ve gone up. Have you services improved that much?
- Look at your sales tax. It’s gone up. Do you get more out of the City of Renton with each tax increase?
- Look at your income tax. Oh wait, we’re not all paying that yet…but we will.
- Look at your cell phone tax. It’s gone up. Does you cell phone work better?
- Look atyour utility tax. It’s gone up. And don’t forget there are additional taxes buried in there you don’t even see. Now we collect garbage every other week but yet we pay more.
Bottom line is the City of Renton, the Renton School District, King County and the State of Washington need to figure it out that businesses are leaving and will continue to until we get control of the spending in this state. That means jobs go away and the people start to follow.
They can’t keep sucking the taxpayers dry. Eventually enough people will wake up and realize they are being shammed.
Off our soap box. Here’s the story that put us over the edge.
Legislature OKs schools raise more through levies
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - State lawmakers passed a bundle of major education reforms Thursday, including a plan that should help the state compete for the Obama administration’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top program.
The education bills were the last major measures approved by the Democrat-led House and Senate on the final day of the 60-day regular session. They will be returning Monday for a special session to finish work on the state budget, but lawmakers were trumpeted the education agenda as a significant step forward.
Read the rest of the story at KOMONews.com.
By Highlands Community Council
Somebody needs to tell the folks in Issaquah that their bill will not go down with this new found “efficiency”.
Even with the trash pickup every other week our bill is still the same.
ISSAQUAH, Wash. — A trashy situation could raise a stink in cities and towns across King County. The Cedar Hills landfill is filling up fast, so the county wants you to put our your trash every other week.
The goal is to get more of your garbage in the yard waste and recycling bins and less in the trash cans.
“I would characterize it as a chance to be more efficient,” said Kevin Kiernan with King County Solid Waste.
Read the rest of the story at KOMONews.com.
By Highlands Community Council
This post is courtesy of the Washington Policy Center. If you want to know what the folks in Olympia are doing to you (not for you), we encourage you to visit the Washington Policy Center web site.
So with a tax increase like this, do you really think that more businesses are going to come to Renton? We have already joined the highest taxed cities in the state club. And don’t forget, we still need to pay for The Landing. It’s time to cut services. Many of us have had to cut back on our budget. It’s time the City, County and State do the same. If they don’t, vote them out.
If you want to see how Renton stacks up to other cities, it is available here: Local Sales and Use Tax.
OFM projects sales tax increase would last through 2015
The Office of Financial Management released today the required I-960 fiscal impact statement for the proposed sales tax increase in HB 3183.
HB 3183 would increase the state’s sales tax rate from 6.5% to 7.5%, a 15.4% increase. The rate would drop back to 6.5% once the state’s unemployment rate hit 5% for four consecutive months.
The state’s current unemployment rate is 9.5%
According to OFM the sales tax increase is projected to be in effect through 2015.
Original article posted here.
By Highlands Community Council
We knew you could.
Salaries for City of Renton employees in 2008 were over $60,000,000. This included over $3.7 million in overtime alone.
Again, we ask the question. If the City of Renton needs to cut budgets to save things like the library, why not cut salaries by 5%. That works out to about $3,000,000 if we do our math correctly.
If you really want to cut the budget eliminate 5 people making over $100,000 and right there you save the City $500,000.
The private sector has had to make cuts. Why not the City too?
By Highlands Community Council
As we look at the January 22nd edition of the Renton Reporter, it is very clear that Renton Political Machine (herein called RPM) is in full swing.
Take a look at the “Letters to the Editor” section. The usual mouthpieces for the City are hard at work fighting for annexation to the King County Library System. Just look at the names. King Parker, Kimberly Unti and many more.
King Parker even signed up to print a nice shiny glossy mailer. Maybe he could take some of that cash and donate it to the Library.
If the City of Renton is looking for ways to cut their budget, maybe they should start by cleaning house at the top.
Let’s take a look at the 2007 salaries of City of Renton (also meaning employees of the City of Renton Taxpayers). We stopped at $90,000. If you want to see all the salaries, they are available here. We have some formatting issues but we’ll get those cleaned up in the next few days along with adding other departments.
We took the salaries from 2007 and added together all the employees in the City of Renton making over $90,000. Their salaries alone total a staggering $13 million annually. There are over 60 employees that make in excess of $100,000 per year. Of those 60 employees, approximately 45 of them received overtime. For those 45 employees the overtime alone was over $750,000. The City is looking to cut budgets. We think they can start by getting these salaries in line with the private sector.
Human Resources
WEBBY, MICHAEL INT -$135,369
AJLS
COVINGTON, JAY CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER - $154,889
KEOLKER, KATHRYN MAYOR - $126,514
JURADO, TERRY MUNICIPAL COURT JUDGE - $123,967
WINE, MARTHA ASSISTANT CAO - $113,893
Finance/IS
BAILEY, MICHAEL FINANCE & INFO SERVICES ADMSTR - $135,369
PARKS, LINDA FISCAL SERVICES DIRECTOR - $98,824
Public Works
ZIMMERMAN, GREGG PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATOR - $135,369
HAHN, PETER DEPUTY P/W ADMIN - TRANS - $124,386
HORNSBY, LYS UTILITY SYSTEMS DIRECTOR - $105,313
STENHOUSE, MICHAEL MAINTENANCE SRVS DIRECTOR - $102,221
GAFOUR, ABDOUL UTILITY ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR- $94,412
SLED, RAYMOND WATER MAINTENANCE MANAGER - $93,884
Economic Development/CED
PIETSCH, ALEXANDER CMTY & ECON DEV ADMIN - $134,018
WATTS, NEIL DEVLP SERVICES DIRECTOR - $104,909
DALE ESTEY, SUZANNE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR - $94,253
HENNING, JENNIFER CURRENT PLANNING MANAGER - $93,344
LIND, REBECCA LONG RANGE PLANNING MANAGER - $93,344
KITTRICK, KAYREN DEVELOPMENT ENGINEERING SUPER - $92,805
MECKLING, LARRY BUILDING OFFICIAL - $91,132
