Taxed Enough

Thank you, Cheney Free Press, for highlighting the taxation issue out-of-town residents are having with their city of Cheney utility bills. Like many others, I was surprised to see new taxes of $25 added to my February statement. The ladies at the city were very pleasant, but couldn’t offer much help.

To put it into more perspective, in the three years we’ve lived outside of Cheney we have replaced windows, added insulation, changed pellet stoves, added wood heat, replaced an old refrigerator and replaced sliders and exterior doors. I did some calculating and discovered our average kilowatt usage per month has decreased 26 percent! However, the taxes have almost erased our hard-earned savings.

On our utility bill the electric tax is 6 percent. The park and rec tax is 4.75 percent. The residential street tax is 4 percent. That totals almost 15 percent. Sales tax in Spokane County is about 8.7 percent. I wouldn’t mind paying 6-10 percent, but 15 percent seems unnecessary.

Leslie King

Cheney