I asked for an armed escort because it was dark outside after I bought the eggs.
I thought these are so valuable.
You must have some big burly guy who's going to escort me to my car.
Welcome to County Connection, the official podcast of the Washington
State Association of Counties, where we dive into the legislative issues
shaping the future of our communities from budgets to public safety,
infrastructure to elections will break down what's happening in Olympia
and how it impacts counties from across the evergreen state.
Stay informed, stay engaged and join us as we amplify the voice
of Washington's 39 counties.
Welcome, everybody, to episode five of the County Connection.
I'm Paul Jewell, the government relations director here at the Washington
State Association of Counties and your host for better or for worse today
and every day on the County Connection.
This is our fifth episode.
We are one day away from the fiscal cutoff here in Olympia,
and I have a special guest with me and we're going to talk taxes.
And that's Candice Bach with the Association of Washington Cities.
Candice, how are you doing?
I'm doing well, Paul.
Thanks for having me on the counties podcast.
Yeah, well, you know, you're the first city person that we've had
on the county podcast.
We've brought some guests in from other places, some former employees
and some agency folks, but you are the first non-county person.
So hopefully this works out well and I'm honored or I maybe you won't have me back.
We'll see. I was just going to say hopefully it'll work out well
and we'll have you back, you know, 10 or 15 times.
But, you know, counties and cities are partners on a lot of things.
You and I certainly work together quite a bit, especially this year
since roles have changed here at WSAC.
You and I have gotten to know each other quite a bit.
And I'm not afraid to admit you've saved my bacon a few times as I've been.
That's what partners are for.
Well, I really do appreciate it.
I'm into a bunch of policy areas that I have never worked in before.
And truth be told, I've blown it a couple of times.
And you've been there to kind of watch my back and pick up the pieces,
which I really appreciate.
So thank you for that.
And thanks for joining us today to talk about everyone's favorite subject,
which is property taxes.
Yeah. Oh my gosh. People love property taxes.
They're always asking for more property taxes.
Higher property taxes.
It's always it comes up no matter what it does.
It I know I can just be walking down the street and they'll be
aren't you that county's guy?
Hey, how do I get to pay higher property taxes?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, you know, my taxes aren't high enough.
I just really think I should be paying more.
Well, that's not true.
And but it is something that you and I need to talk about
because we just had a meeting today with a broad coalition
that we've been working with for a while.
And we've been working on this issue for many years.
And that's the one percent property tax growth limit
for both cities and counties and other taxing districts
here in Washington state.
What are we trying to do?
You know, we being both the city's association and the county's association
have been trying to increase that growth limit from one percent
up to just a modest three percent for 20 years or more.
Now feels that long, doesn't it?
It is. We have been saying it's been a generation,
which makes me feel particularly old since I remember when it was six percent.
You don't look old at all.
Thank you, Paul. You're welcome.
But it's been a challenge for 20 years or better.
And when we talk to our cities and I know it's true for counties as well,
they're saying there's a structural deficit and we can't keep going
the way we've been going.
We are we are literally doing much more with much less.
And something's got to change.
So so let's talk about how we got here first, because I want to dive into that.
And then I want to talk about why it's important that we try to
what you characterize as fix this, because I think a lot of people
would not characterize this this, meaning the limit being broken
versus kind of what you're talking about, which was
I think you described it as a structural deficit.
So I want to get into that.
But how did we get here to begin with? Because cities and counties
didn't used to have these limitations, right?
We used to have authority, I think, up to to grow the property tax rate
up to six percent annually not that long ago.
So how did we end up in this situation?
Yeah, you know, I think we did have that that growth limit up to six percent.
And that was up until the late 90s.
It was what 2001, I want to say, when
there was a voter initiative and put forward to to cap that growth rate.
And obviously, voters don't like paying property tax.
So that's pretty popular to to be told that you could really reduce that growth rate.
One percent seemed to be picked arbitrarily just to make sure
that it was a really significant limit. Just a low number.
Yeah, just a low number.
And, you know, after I think, gosh, I want to say like five, six years of court battles.
The initiative was actually overturned as unconstitutional.
But then the legislature came back and in a one day special session
enacted it. And so here we are.
So even though the courts said that the initiative from 2001, which, by the way,
was initiative 747 for you history buffs out there who want to look up the history
of initiatives, which I know you're listening after because it was it was in 2007.
So it's about six years of court battles.
They the Supreme Court finally ruled it was unconstitutional.
But the legislature then came back and put it back in place.
Why did they do that?
You know, gosh, I can actually remember some of it.
I wasn't in this role then, but I was working for a city at the time.
And, you know, I think it was a couple of things.
They were certainly feeling like, well, this must have been the will of the voters.
And there was also some concern about bank capacity.
And if you didn't put it into place again, that that six percent that we had the
ability to increase by had been would have been banked for those seven years.
Oh, seven years. That's 42 percent.
That is fast, Paul. You are good with math in your head.
That is not my skill set.
Back in the fourth grade, we had these flashcards and multiplication tables.
I think we called them times tables back then.
Oh, yeah.
But I'm much more sophisticated now as an adult.
I call them multiplication tables.
Well, yeah, that's impressive.
You still did it in your head.
So, yeah, there was a concern that, well, we would go crazy and just increase things by 42 percent.
Just jacking way up.
Yeah.
And so they needed to act on that emergency basis with a special session.
So that one percent limitation was put back in place by the legislature.
That would have been under the Gregoire administration.
That was so long ago that I wasn't even in county government.
And I've been in county government for nearly 20 years.
I was still in private business then.
That was a big change, right?
From six percent to one percent.
Now, that's not the only thing that we can increase property taxes by annually, though, right?
There's also another factor called, isn't it called new construction that we also add to our property tax rolls?
Yeah, I guess super confusing, I know.
But when there's new construction, you apply the rate to that new construction in its first year.
Okay.
And so you get the benefit of the new construction and then it rolls into the overall assessed value for future calculations.
Now, when we talk about one percent growth, is it one percent growth on the value of the property in a district?
So, for instance, say, you know, the assessor goes out and let's make it really simple.
They say that all of the property in Thurston County is worth, you know, combined a thousand dollars.
Is it a one percent growth in that property valuation or is it a one percent growth rate annually in the amount of revenue that they collect?
It's so confusing, but you're right.
It's not on the growth of the assessed value.
It's not on an individual's tax bill.
It's a one percent cap on the growth of the revenue that a city or a county or another special purpose district can collect.
So it's the entire.
So if let's use that same example.
I'm I've got a thousand dollars worth of property tax value in my district.
Maybe there's a big project and it raises that tax value by 10 percent.
So now I've got a thousand one hundred dollars in total tax value.
And if I tax that at, say, five percent, I'm going to get 50 bucks a year off of that.
Right. Well, actually, I'm going to get fifty five bucks a year or so off of that eleven hundred dollars in total taxes.
But that one percent gets applied to that.
It gets applied to the fifty five dollars, not the eleven hundred.
Correct. And as an individual taxpayer, should I expect that my tax bill is only going to be limited to a growth rate of one percent every year?
Or is that not part of this discussion?
I know the individual tax bill.
So many things go into that.
What is your assessed value?
What's your neighbor's assessed value?
How did that change?
What is what else got added to the assessor assessed roles, the assessed value in the whole jurisdiction?
So a lot goes into what an individual pays.
The one percent cap is just on the amount of revenue that the city or the county can collect.
OK, OK. Sounds super confusing.
It is. And I know people get really confused about it, which makes it really hard to kind of talk about changing property tax codes or property tax growth rates.
And people kind of understanding what the impacts are.
Right. And I think that's why we run into some of these well resistance essentially, you know, about even kind of addressing these issues or even talking about them in the legislature,
which is probably why the cities and the counties of board and working on this issue for 20 years.
Yeah. You know, we've taken kind of a myth busting approach to some of our communications this year.
One of the things that gets talked about and it's a myth is that going from a one percent cap to a three percent cap triples somebody's property taxes.
It does not because that's not how it's calculated.
So if my property tax bill is one hundred dollars this year under one percent cap, it'd be one hundred and one dollars next year.
Well, sure, because we just established it's limited to the one percent growth rate is limited to the amount that the jurisdiction can collect.
Yeah. So if you went from one to from a one percent growth rate to a three percent growth rate, there's absolutely no possibility with triple.
Yeah, you're not going from one hundred dollars to three hundred dollars.
You're going from one hundred dollars to one hundred and three dollars versus one hundred and one dollars.
So it's a two dollar break.
Okay. That's I think that's helpful context to put it in.
Now, you talked a minute ago about the reason that cities and counties were interested in addressing this issue was to attack a structural deficit.
Can you explain what you meant by that?
Yeah, we like to use that term because if you're one of your major sources of revenue and for cities, property tax makes up about 20,
22 percent a quarter, say, of the typical revenue a city collects.
And I know that's different for counties.
Yeah, for counties, it's about half.
Yeah, it's actually a little over 50 percent.
It's our major source of revenue.
Yeah. And cities, as we've talked before, we've got a few more revenue tools.
So it's still a huge which we're super jealous of.
I know. Can we borrow some of those revenue tools every day?
Can we just borrow them for six months a year, like right around Christmas time and, you know, things like that?
Or maybe April and October.
How's that sound? Yeah, we'll talk about that more.
You'll think about it. I have a feeling you're not going to think very hard about that.
Maybe not. I forgot the question now.
That's a trick I play. All of the people that I interviewed.
Structural deficit. I'm back.
So if your revenues, though, and major sources of revenues are capped at one percent growth
and your expenses are not capped and are going up by at least inflation,
but probably even higher than that because the things cities and counties buy
typically have a higher inflation rate than the typical household basket of goods.
So you've got a structural deficit.
Although eggs have been going crazy lately.
Well, that's true. Almost just like concrete.
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's the kind of thing that you're talking about concrete asphalt,
you know, great big equipment to do different projects and get work done.
Healthcare benefits for our staff are.
And insurance has been going through the roof lately, too, right?
Double-digit increases year over year.
Yeah. So our basket of goods in the city and county government world are increasing significantly more than one percent.
So you do that for 20 plus years. You've got a structural deficit.
You know, that's really interesting. And that is a really good description of the structural deficit.
I mean, what you're basically saying is our expenses are just going up at higher rates
than we're able to keep up with as far as our revenue when you're especially for counties and for cities.
You said it was like 22 percent revenue for counties.
It's more than 50 percent. If that if those are some of your biggest sources of revenue
and you're limited in that growth rate to one percent, but your expenses are going up even even two percent
a year and we know it's been higher than that, especially recently with just pure inflation.
At some point, you're going to have a major crash because that revenue line versus your expense line,
the gap is getting bigger and bigger and it's not in a good way.
Right. The expenses are growing much faster than the revenues.
They are. And I think when I talk to our city officials, I'm always so impressed.
And I'm guessing it's the same with your county elected folks.
They do an amazing job of band aiding over that structural deficit.
And what choice do they have?
They don't have any choice and they've made it work and they've been making it work for 20 years
and they have been doing more with less, not keeping up, but somehow keeping it together.
But that is it's frame.
It's coming apart. Right.
There is this tipping point and it feels like we are really reaching that tipping point.
Well, I'd like to dive into that because that's really interesting.
But, you know, you kind of said something that struck me.
But before we get there, just a few statistical things that I did a little research on.
Washington State as a state, when you compare tax burden to income, has been falling significantly,
actually, over the years, including since this particular initiative was passed
and then reinstated by the legislature.
So as a state, you know, people complain about taxes, which I don't blame them.
I complain about taxes, too.
I don't blame them for paying taxes either.
But the data shows, the math shows that as a percentage of personal income,
we actually have been decreasing year over year over year.
We're like 31st in the nation.
Oh, that's very interesting because that's not what you hear in the rhetoric.
No, it certainly isn't.
But in some ways, that's something to be proud of, too, right?
I mean, the more personal income people have, the more they have the ability to make decisions with their money,
which is a little ironic that that's actually what's happening in, you know,
a state that is as liberal and as blue as Washington State is.
You would think that just kind of when you look at the hard definition of what these different,
you know, conservative versus liberal ideologies are,
you'd think we would have actually a higher tax burden in Washington.
But it's but that's not the case, which is interesting.
Also, as we've done some research here with the counties and we've noticed that since initiative 747
and then the reenactment by the legislature of the 1% limit has been in place,
the rate at which people pay for their property taxes has also been falling precipitously year over year over year.
Yeah, that rate is a part of that confusion, too, I think, over our tax system in this state
or how the property tax works, because I always like to think of it as a teeter totter.
If assessed value is going up, the rate is going down because you've got to keep that balance of the cap on growth of the revenue.
Right. The property tax values are just going up at a much higher pace than the 1% growth keeps up with.
And so every year that actually goes down.
So people as a percentage of value not only are that is their personal income higher than it used to be
and what they retain in in tax burden is is better than it has been and it gets better every single year.
But what they pay as a percentage of property value continues to drop every single year,
even though we still are allowed to grow at a 1% rate, which again just shows you that what you're saying about the structural deficit is is correct.
So in that context, why shouldn't we just believe it when people say, well, Candace, that was the point, right?
You said that cities have made it work.
You I certainly said the same thing about counties.
We've made it work.
You know, how do you respond to well, exactly.
That's exactly what we wanted as taxpayers.
That's exactly the point.
And why should we do it any different now that you've proven that you can get the job done with less?
You know, it's a good question.
It's a valid question.
But I think what we know and certainly what our city elected officials know is they don't have community members coming to them asking them to do less.
They're being asked to do more.
You know, the the cost of maintaining streets is going up and that's just to maintain them, not even improve them.
Same with providing amenities like parks.
And then I think both cities and counties are being asked to do more in the area of human services for sure.
And particularly counties, but but even more so cities than we ever have in the past.
Right. And then affordable housing is also being more and more pushed to local governments to take responsibility there.
So we're doing different kinds of things.
We're being asked by our community members to do different kinds of things, more of those kinds of things.
And they're not able to keep it all together and patch it all together with the revenue that they've got.
So the community keeps, you know, and rightfully so, they've got expectations about the level of service that they want.
The thing that comes with that is having to find a way to pay for it.
Well, with a growing population and more people located in the same area, your problems just get bigger exponentially, right?
They just flat do. You've got to have better transportation systems to manage heavier loads, which costs more money.
People want transit. That costs money to transit doesn't pay for itself.
I don't think in any instance we've ever seen transit pay for itself.
You know, if you want a city pool or you want, you know, some like you said, nice parks, those things cost money.
And for counties and for cities, you know, policing is not the same as it used to be.
It's very different and a lot more cost a lot more costly than it ever was.
And I think what's really interesting that a lot of people also don't think about is, you know,
a lot of the infrastructure that we rely on today for government services and even for transportation was built in the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s.
And that stuff's wearing out. Yeah. I mean, you look at the state of bridges. Exactly.
Across our state. It's not great. And those are really expensive things to upgrade, to fix, to replace. Right.
And we're not doing a good job of always being able to maintain things because of that structural deficit.
So then you've got to talk about replacement costs. Yeah. Cities and counties.
Well, I shouldn't speak for cities since you're here, but I'll try anyways. No, I'm just kidding.
But I know counties have made a lot of cutbacks in maintenance over the years because that's what you have to do when you don't have the revenue.
Yeah. The first thing you do is defer maintenance. Right. Right.
Well, either or you try to do it more efficiently. And there have been tools that have been created to do things a lot more efficiently.
I mean, just the advent of technology has made administrative work a lot easier and a lot faster.
You know, communication with constituents a lot easier and a lot faster.
We're not we're not putting mail on the back of wagons or horses anymore. Right.
We could just zip it via email. So a lot of that has changed.
But at the same time, we're just not keeping up with the costs.
The pace is just a bit of it's almost kind of a breakneck speed in some ways.
And that structural deficit just keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
How are things going with the legislature when when you're having this conversation?
Yeah, I think it's it's going better than it has maybe, you know,
even 10 years ago when we were trying to have this conversation and counties were really leading on that conversation.
Then there's I believe a greater understanding of how that structural deficit is having this impact.
And of course, the state has the same challenge. You know, they lifted the cap for themselves to respond to the McCleary decision.
Yeah, that was what six or seven years ago. Yeah.
Was it longer than that? I don't remember. I don't remember either.
It all blends together. Like it was definitely pre pandemic.
It was pre pandemic. Yeah. So it was before 2019.
But so they you know, they had the McCleary decision.
They had to find a way to fund education. And so they lifted that cap for the state's share of the property tax.
That cap is now back in place for the state.
And again, we're hearing about the struggles they have in funding basic education, something we all value.
Well, not just basic education, but I mean, a 12 billion dollar deficit projected over the next budget cycle. Right.
Yeah, it's significant.
So I think it just points to the fact that this one percent cap was always going to create a problem for government,
no matter whether or not it's, you know, the smallest city or this, you know, a big county or the state.
We've all got the same problem. And over the last year or two,
I feel like it's finally really resonating with the legislature and certain legislators in particular that we've got we've got to take some action.
I also think the messaging about trusting city elected officials, county elected officials to make good decisions.
So what we're asking is not to increase the property tax.
We're asking them to give cities and counties and other special purpose districts that local flexibility to do it if it's right for them.
Right. And trust those elected officials to be accountable to their citizens, their their residents to make those decisions.
You know, it's interesting the points you just made when you think about how this could be affecting the state.
It's never going to affect them at the same level that it's affecting cities, the people you work for.
It's never going to affect them at the same level that it affects counties, the folks that I work for.
But it still is an important piece. And they're starting to feel that pressure.
But it's only 10 percent of their revenue, 22 percent of yours, over 50 percent of ours.
Obviously, we have a little higher sense of urgency than they do.
But it's interesting that they're starting to now feel the pinch so many years down the road.
And hopefully that's that's, you know, hopefully that's driving them to listen a little bit more to some of the some of the cries for help, I guess,
for lack of a better term, that they're hearing from some of their city and county partners.
I had a conversation the other day with a legislator.
You talk about the trust issue and I was talking about this very issue with them.
And, you know, they just said, you know, look, we we just don't think, you know, you guys can be, you know, we we if we're going to give you this authority,
we want to tell you how to spend it. We want to make sure you're spending it right.
And I said, you know, I appreciate that X, Y, Z legislator, because I'm not going to use any any any names.
But, you know, you trust the counties to run the entire court system for the state of Washington and the cities and the counties.
Basically, we implement and enforce every law that you pass locally and we do it pretty well.
I think we can figure this part out, don't you think?
And how did that go? Well, they gave me a strange look like they actually did give me a look like, huh, I don't think I ever thought of it that way before.
Yeah, I was testifying yesterday on a different kind of local option bill and mention this accountability issue and and and used a line something like,
you know, our our city elected officials are accountable to their residents at the ballot box and at the grocery store and in the church pew and on the soccer field and at the gym.
Because trust me, I've been that elected official and I've been at the gym and they expect you to stop what you're doing and talk.
Absolutely. And so they're going to they're going to hear about it.
And that is where we want the decision to be made at the local level where somebody can have direct input in to what their city council member, their county council members thinking.
So, yeah, you can trust those elected officials to make these decisions.
They're making pretty big and complicated decisions already on a regular basis.
Yeah. You know, the other big issue or one of there's a lot of big issues this year, but another really big issue that's taken up a lot of air time in the legislature is public safety this year.
Right. And it has been for a few years.
There's been a lot of controversial things over the years.
Last year, we had the initiatives around police pursuits.
Right. And other things and they've been talking about policing and, you know, both for juveniles and adults.
And we've been talking about, you know, all of that related to substance issues and behavioral health issues and homelessness issues because it's all encompassing.
And we've been talking about that for a while, but there does seem to be a real desire by the legislature this year, some of it being driven by Governor Ferguson's demand for one hundred million dollars for new law enforcement across the board.
But I think other legislators are hearing it, too, that, you know, communities want more law enforcement.
They want more investment in public safety.
And I think it's ironic that we're talking about funding for local governments and whether or not the state will support funding improvements for local governments, because public safety is really what local governments do for the most part.
Don't you agree? It is a big part of the city budget.
And I know it's a big part of counties budgets for cities.
You know, on average, it's about 40 percent of our budget between public safety, criminal justice expenses.
Yeah, for us, it's about 70 to 80 percent.
Yeah, with the district and Superior Court systems and public defenders and everything else that goes and the jails.
It adds up. But I think legislators, particularly those who are campaigning this past campaign season and our city council members, your folks, they're hearing about their residents concern about public safety.
And for cities, we identified that as a priority going into this legislative session that we needed more help from the state to fund public safety needs.
And that's everything from new officers to more public defenders and prosecutors in jail, but also diversion programs and therapeutic courts and kind of and behavioral health corresponders.
So that public safety category has sort of a whole spectrum of things in it.
So we've been really hoping to see this the state, the legislature provide more support for public safety.
Well, yeah, I think the connection that needs to be made here is if they want to do that, right, it's going to be delivered at the local level.
And if you want more investment in public safety, it's going to come from cities and counties.
And so you need to provide cities and counties with more resources, period.
That's the only way it's going to happen unless the state suddenly is going to start paying for these things, which they traditionally haven't ever done.
I mean, they do have their you know, they've got the state patrol and obviously they've got the state courts through the Court of Appeals and and and the Supreme Court.
And they do provide funding for prosecutors and for judges at the county, at the county level, not at the city.
No, that's true. But they only provide for half of that funding.
We have to pick up the other half. So but I guess my point is, is those services that they want and that their constituents are telling them they want are delivered by us.
And we can't do it unless we have more resources.
Yeah, I think we're really asking the legislature this year to be a partner and invest more local tools are great.
But we'd also like to see some other direct investment.
What that ends up looking like. It's hard to say at this point.
We've talked about the importance of ongoing sustainable funding and grants are great.
We all like grant funding, but particularly when you're investing in public safety and ongoing service with staff that you're hiring,
whether that's a law enforcement officer, a public defender, you've got to know how you're going to pay for them, not just this year or next year, but three and four years from now.
Right. You need ongoing revenue, but it can't it can't be an ongoing static revenue because the expenses related to that personnel
and providing that service are always going to go up.
You know, it's interesting that that, you know, we've got a law in place in Washington that, you know,
keeps property taxes at the local level at one percent a year.
Right. For a growth rate. If I had a job where I was only getting a one percent per year growth rate in my salary, I'd go probably find a new job.
Yeah. You know, it's one of the talking points that I've used with the legislature is police officer salaries have gone up about 20 percent in the last five years.
I was going to say just in the last couple of years. Yeah.
And I mean, we've got to pay those first responders what it takes to keep them on the street.
So not begrudging them that. But that's the reality is that cost has been going up and it's been going up pretty significantly.
Absolutely. And every other represented group that works for city and county, you know, city and county governments, they know what their what their personal income costs.
They know what the price of eggs are, you know, is doing. They know what the price of gasoline is doing.
They know what the economy is doing and what the inflation rates are.
And when they come to the bargaining table, that's the data they use.
They don't say, oh, city, county, we understand your revenue.
You're capped at one percent.
Capped at one percent. Right.
No, they say, look, this is what we deserve.
This is what we need to survive. This is what we need to just maintain a level or grow a little bit.
And you can't begrudge them for doing that.
But at the same time, what do we get the resources to keep up?
Yeah. So this has been great and we're not going to do this all day because, you know, people get bored when they talk about taxes.
Who wants to talk about taxes all day? Besides you and me, of course, we could probably do this for a few more hours.
But let's bottom line this, because I know you've done some research on this and you shared it with legislators.
If we went from a one percent property tax increase to a three percent property tax increase on an annual basis, what does that mean to the average homeowner?
You know, we did this math for just cities.
So I want to make sure that there's no confusion there.
It's just like the city share of a property tax for the average homeowner.
It's it's about less than twenty dollars a year difference.
You know, obviously lots of caveats there. You add it onto your house.
Maybe that's not the case.
If you're in an area where the average home price is a million dollars.
Right. Maybe it's a little bit different.
But again, it's in that kind of scale of twenty dollars a year.
So it's it's not a tripling.
It actually may not be as dramatic an increase as it sounds like.
So we did the same research recently and we looked at both the county road fund and the county general fund.
So for folks who may not know the two besides the state schools, which is the largest portion, individual portion of property taxes that you pay,
you either pay into the county road fund and general fund if you're in an unincorporated area or you pay into the city's
basically general fund and the county general fund if you're in an incorporated area, meaning you're inside of a city.
So we just looked at the general fund and the road fund for counties.
So for unincorporated residents and we found similar results, it was in one of our counties,
it was barely over ten dollars is what someone would pay combined for both of those funds up to a maximum of thirty
eight dollars in King County, the single largest and most expensive county in Washington.
Right. So it was anywhere between ten dollars and thirty eight dollars.
And many of them were right in that and right under twenty dollars annually.
That would be this difference right from a one percent to a three percent.
So it's nowhere near the tripling that sometimes you hear in the rhetoric when people are opposed to making a change like this.
Yeah. And I understand we were joking about this a little bit earlier.
People don't want to don't like to pay taxes. I don't want to pay taxes.
No. And it's I hate taxes.
It's true. We just are talking about, you know, paying a fair share to get the services that everybody wants.
And I think we're really empathetic to folks that are struggling.
Price of eggs keeps coming up.
Have you seen the price? I'm telling you.
So I have to quick little story.
I went to the grocery store and I don't buy eggs very often.
I will be I will freely admit my wife buys most of the eggs at our house.
But I had gone to Ellensburg for the weekend and I decided to stop at the store and get some eggs.
And I was shocked when I went to the cooler and I saw a dozen eggs at seven ninety nine.
And I almost I almost put them back. I thought I am not I don't make enough money to pay seven ninety nine for a dozen eggs.
We're I we're definitely having less eggs in my house as well.
But I asked for an armed escort because it was dark outside after I bought the eggs.
I thought these are so valuable. You must have some big burly guy who's going to escort me to my car.
But I think, you know, we are empathetic and so are the county council members and city council members making these decisions about the impacts on the taxpayers.
So they're going to take that into account when they're making these decisions.
We're just asking for the ability to let them make the decision.
Yeah, I'm with you. I think that's the right thing to do.
They're the ones who have to answer to their constituents.
And like we said, literally for these local elected officials, it's in the line at the grocery store with those eggs.
Yeah, with those eggs. It's in the church pew.
It's on the soccer field. It's in the gym.
It's, you know, it's on the sidewalk as you're walking down the street.
People know who you are and they're you know, if they have a strong opinion on it, they're going to definitely let you know.
I don't want to pay taxes either. I hate taxes.
I hate taxes. April 15th is like the worst day of the year for me.
But I do want emergency responders to come if I need them.
Right. I do want safe roads.
I don't want the bridge to fall when I'm crossing the river.
Right. I want to make sure that my kids have good schools.
Okay, my kids are out of school, but I wanted them to make I wanted to make sure they had good schools.
And I certainly want my grandkids whenever they get here to have good schools as well.
So, I mean, I get it. I mean, I totally empathize with people, but you can't have one without, you know, some reasonableness on the other.
This isn't going to get easier. No, the longer you wait to make these changes that deficit is going to be harder.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Candace, it's been great talking to you.
It's probably a good place to end it before we geek out too much and nerd out too much on property taxes or eggs.
Yeah.
Paul, thanks for having me. It's been really nice to be on the County's podcast.
Well, yeah, I hope you'll come back. And when you do, maybe I'll make you some eggs.
You know, maybe it'll be a luxury meal at that point.
I hate pretty fancy.
All right. Take care till then.
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