POSITION ON TAXES

By Ha Minh Mach

Do not support raising taxes

- Increases of sales taxes on goods and services work only when applied at county or state level. At city level, taxpayers would instead go to another city with lower sales taxes to spend their hard-earned cash on.

- Increases of parcel taxes or property taxes at these difficult economic times are counter-productive. Taxpayers are loaded with their own expenditures and previously approved taxes burdens. At this election, many propositions and measures ask taxpayers to self-impose more taxes on them. We should stop the endless calls for more and higher taxes. We must remember that taxpayers are themselves trying to survive through these tough times.

- The calls for more income taxes would drive taxpayers to move out of California therefore taxes revenues would decrease and lead to more deficit.

- Hotel and motel city taxes on registrations are the areas where revenues can be increased and not charged to Westminster citizens. Westminster has approximately seven hmotels therefore, increase taxes could make a small impact on revenues. However, visitors can go to the next lodging in neighboring cities.

- We should think outside the box to find other effective ways to raise revenues and there are no excuses for collateralizing our residents' future due to excessive spending. We can increase monetary fines that penalized bad choices such as texting while driving, aggressive driving, public intoxification, and drunk driving or may be we needs to add parking meters.