by Sarah Crawford
It is incredible to me that Linda Abbott, Les Presmyk and Dave Crozier have the audacity to ask the citizens of Gilbert to reelect them to the Town Council after they raised taxes, then rescinded them, then misled the public and attempted to raise them again.
As the chairman of Families for Responsible Government, No on 406, I was
very involved with the budget situation that was consuming Gilbert in
2009-2010. These three council members unanimously voted to raise our taxes
in three different ways in June of 2009, based on faulty budget projections
of huge deficits that never materialized.
After the Gilbert citizens wholeheartedly rejected these unnecessary tax increases, and forced the council to rescind them, Abbott, Presmyk, and Crozier still tried to raise taxes during the biggest economic crisis most of us have ever known, by putting the 17% sales tax increase on the ballot in the form of Prop. 406.
To make matters worse, these tax and spend politicians labeled the tax a
"Public Safety" tax, when in fact, the money raised would NOT be increasing
the public safety budget at all. They claimed that if this tax increase
did not pass, the town would be forced to lay off 65 policemen and fire
fighters. Nice!
People of Gilbert saw through the rhetoric and scare tactics and voted the
tax hike down by a wide margin of 8,000 votes and yet, not one public safety
officer lost their job. Now Abbott, Presmyk, and Crozier have the gall to ask us to trust them again? (By the way, Ben Cooper voted for Prop 406 too.) Not in a million years!
For this and other reasons, I’m encouraging people to vote for Eddie Cook,
Victor Petersen, and Jordan Ray. To learn more about the misdeeds of our
incumbents, stay tuned to updates at GilbertWatch.com