I recently read that Post Falls City Council wants to raise property taxes to give raises to city employees. Strange that I also read Coeur d'Alene is able to give city employees a 3 percent pay increase WITHOUT raising taxes. I have also read that Post Falls already has the highest property taxes in the county, higher than Coeur d'Alene, much higher than Hayden, yet they want to raise them higher without any consideration of all the people who are currently struggling in this economy, houses are in foreclosure, many short sales and homeowners are becoming renters since they can no longer afford to own.

When property values went up so did our property taxes accordingly, and when property values took a major drop our taxes remained high, go figure. Go in any neighborhood and look at the for sale signs or empty houses that have been foreclosed on. Seems like Post Falls City Council should learn to live within its budget. It just passed an annual water and sewer rate increase as it does every year.

I would really like to see The Press print the names of any council members that vote for an increase so they can be held accountable election time. Also it would be nice to see The Press do for Post Falls what it did for Coeur d'Alene last year, which played a role in prevention of property tax increases: publish the salaries, benefits and bonuses of Post Falls employees so the public who is making $8 to $11 an hour can see what our public servants and police are being paid.

I also saw in the paper that crime in Post Falls went up while the rest of Idaho went down, yet we are giving more raises? Maybe we need less fancy unmarked police cars writing tickets and more crime fighting instead. Post Falls is a great place to live so let's not continue to drive people out of their homes with more tax increases.

PAUL FORD

Post Falls