You might remember Aesop’s fable about the grasshopper and the ant.
While the ant carefully put away food for the winter, the grasshopper fiddled the summer away.
When winter came, the grasshopper begged the ant for food.
But the ant was disgusted with the grasshopper’s failure to plan and turned him away.
I think the Port of Port Townsend has been behaving like the grasshopper.
For years it has fiddled away.
It allowed tenants to use its facilities at below-market rates and didn’t put enough aside in a reserve fund for future maintenance expenses.
The Marine Trades Association claims that those same tenants generate more than $275.7 million in direct business revenue and $59.9 million in direct personal income every year.
Clearly these tenants are not poor folk. I think the taxpayers are like the ant — working hard to put food on the table, working hard to put something by for hard times.
And for the 13.2 percent of the population in this county that lives in poverty, putting food on the table is hard and putting something by for hard times is nearly impossible.
Now the Port, like the grasshopper begging the ant for food, is begging the taxpayers, including those in poverty, for $15 million in help in the form of an Industrial Development District levy.
The ant was disgusted with the grasshopper’s failure to plan and turned the grasshopper away.
The taxpayers should do the same with the Port’s IDD levy.
Please vote to reject proposition 1, the port’s IDD Levy
David Neuenschwander,
Quilcene