Letters for April 25, 2022
Support local business
I am someone who loves to shop, a “condition” inherited from my mom. She used to call it “retail therapy.” I am also someone who has never (yes, never, never, ever) ordered anything (not.one.thing) (zip, zero, nada) from Amazon. Instead, I support local bookstores (shout-out to Atticus and Auntie’s and Second Look Books), local clothing stores, especially consignment shops (hullo, Echo and Fringe & Fray), local gift shops etc. I am also a HUGE fan of thrift shops (yoohoo, American Cancer Society on Garland and Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc …). I’m wondering if the new fees that Amazon must now charge will encourage other people to buy local.
Support our home town shops and services, help someone in need by shopping secondhand stores. Instead of contributing to another “space flight” for a Gazillionaire.
Oh, and we might think about the control of the marketplace. If not enough (fill in the blank) are selling, why they’ll just be deleted from the catalog. Potentially disappearing altogether.
Leslie A. Smith
Greenacres
Property taxes and senior citizens
I recently called the assessor’s office in order to ask about the last adjustment to senior reductions on property taxes. According to the information given to me, the last adjustment was in 2016. Seniors cannot make over $40,000 or they do not qualify for a property tax break. Things on the property front have changed dramatically since then. And our houses have no actual “sale value” if a property owner can not afford to move.
I live in the Perry District, which basically still has the same buckled sidewalks and older houses in disrepair as it has always had. Three around me are empty and have been for years. (Last weekend I called the owner of one of them to let him know there was a very derelict van sitting outside his house for hours. He came over and asked the driver to leave.) Our taxes went up by $500 last year. Is the idea to drive senior citizens on fixed incomes out of their homes? Its time to revisit the senior property tax issue and give us a realistic reduction. Many of us don’t qualify at all and are sorely in need.
Deborah Majewski
Spokane