To the Editor:
Mayor Franklin is correct. A one-size-fits-all approach to municipal budgeting doesn’t work. Her proposed legislative fix advocating to increase the annual cap from 1% to 3% is a great idea if aimed at public safety.
Everyone’s not to blame for the social chaos necessitating the lift, some are to blame. Even if intentions were initially noble, the real-world outfall bears no resemblance to the Shangri-La pitches. Society’s mired in muck because of discordant policies (simultaneously coercive, invited, unfunded, and multifaceted) enacted in recent years by the virtue-signaling clueless.
Although it’s almost incomprehensible that anyone could be deceived to such a degree, leaders incentivizing lawlessness by allowing high visibility crime to go unaddressed aren’t persuaded that radical restoration of order is even needed. While citizens sounding the alarm all along bear the brunt of the crime, their pleas for relief get them labeled as heartless racists. That’s grotesque.
If you’ve lived long enough to have experienced civic order as part of normal daily life in Snohomish County, your equilibrium is probably off nowadays. For you who haven’t, please understand that conflating elimination of standards with achievement, expenditure with results, semantics with compassion, and indiscriminate social agitation with targeted (necessary) justice reform is a crock of horse feathers. Therefore, any legislation debate must include a thorough, honest post mortem evaluating the prudence and rectitude of midnight blue policies that have hit Everett especially hard.
Paul Keller
Inmate, Stafford Creek Corrections Center
Aberdeen
Formerly of Snohomish County
