Letters to the editor: Mayor’s vote, property taxes, Interfaith Sanctuary

Mayor’s vote

I strongly disagree with a recent letter to the editor, by Jeremy Gray, that attacks Boise Mayor Lauren Mclean for approving the downtown development project by Ball Ventures Ahlquist. Mayor McLean should be applauded for doing the right thing by supporting more housing. Especially when it involves the type of housing that Ball Ventures Ahlquist is proposing, which will also help to address other challenges Boise is facing, particularly with parking and economic development by providing a creative integration of uses.

The reader’s premise that there is enough housing under development misses the mark entirely, given the current conditions we are facing. Try telling the people currently looking for homes that we can now stop developing housing because there is already enough housing. Or try telling the people currently on a monthslong waiting list for housing close to downtown that there is no need for more housing, or that construction of such housing certainly should not occur in my “most peaceful” backyard. Such a view is completely detached from reality.

Robert Jones, Boise

Property taxes

Zillow says the home we bought 35 years ago is worth 12 times what we paid. Great! — if we want to sell and move, but we don’t — if we can avoid it. We now pay nearly as much in property taxes as we did on the mortgage before we paid it off 15 years ago upon retirement.

A third of our property tax goes to schools, whose funding the legislature has shrunk, forcing schools to raise local property taxes. This is no time for so-called “tax relief” in the form of lower income tax rates. It’s robbing our kids’ education — our future — to give corporations and high-income earners another “break.” Idaho needs educated workers more than we need lower taxes.

The so-called “surplus” results largely from hold-backs of previously approved appropriations, which have hit education particularly hard. Instead of an income-tax cut, we need fully funded budgets for schools and colleges.

Instead of a $50-to-$100 income-tax “rebate,” regular folks need re-indexing of the homeowner’s exemption to halt the shift of our property-tax burden from commercial, industrial, and agricultural properties to our homes. Instead, we have ill-considered proposals to prohibit local governments from taxing growth to pay its costs.

We need real tax relief!

Gary E. Richardson, Boise

Interfaith Sanctuary

In response to Gayle Wilde’s letter, it is admirable to help the homeless. With regards to those being housed in hotels; the real beneficial amenities are: people have larger beds, private bathrooms, microwaves, desks/chairs, but more importantly, doors that lock for privacy.

According to your letter, you would like the homeless to forfeit these accommodations in order to be sheltered with over 200 other people sleeping in bunkbeds several feet apart or on floor mats with no doors on the rooms and minimal storage for belongings. They all would share toilets, showers, and sinks.

Seattle moved 230 homeless people out of “congregate housing,” during COVID, says Dan Malone, executive director Downtown Emergency Service Center in Seattle. What did they find? Hotels reduced chaos, violence, and improved well-being. Malone stated, “More use must be made of hotel and motel properties…We should refuse to go back to the status quo of cramming people into crowded congregate emergency shelters.” Steven Berg, National Alliance to End Homelessness, said, “We now know that that model (congregate sheltering) is not safe, not healthy, and not effective.”

Be an advocate for the homeless. Together let’s imagine and create something better for our homeless population, not warehouses.

Lynda Evenson, Boise

COVID relief money

Gov. Little is complaining that Idaho is not getting enough COVID relief money, while our Legislature turned down a $6 million federal grant to help with early childhood education. A bit ironic I think!

I would suggest that since Idaho is doing such a spectacular job without the need for federal assistance that the governor should not complain about Idaho not getting as much funding as other, much larger states such as California, in the new relief bill.

Patti Marshall, Boise

This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 4:31 PM.