2020-07-01 City Council Item No. 7 Public Comment - Estrada Regular MEETING - Additional Meeting Materials1
Emily Grisenti
From:Ricky Estrada <estrada.ricardo23@yahoo.com>
Sent:Wednesday, July 1, 2020 5:55 PM
To:Public Comments
Subject:Public Comments - Ricky Estrada
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click on any links or open attachments unless
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Best wishes to our new police department. I support strongly funding our military veterans and police.
The 2 images attached to this email are from “The institute for Local Government” .
It discusses public service ethics for local government.
The parent organization is the “League of California cities” .
As displayed in question 2 of the image , it would be unethical for the government to use public resources to sway voters
for a particular candidate, an incumbent, or ballot measure.
The city has been using public resources swaying the public to vote in support of tax measure DD.
In the most recent mailing , is using language to sway the public to vote in one direction . The city should also send out
positive impacts or just stay silent .
1)The language says “this one cent sales tax” , when the truth is it’s 1% , and that can be more than one cent depending
on the overall transaction.
2) The language says “ to keep those departments operating , but still functional, it would be necessary to “spread the
pain” to other departments . “
3) “The sales tax was overwhelming approved by two‐thirds of residents” ‐ Which is untrue because it was not
overwhelming, it is only 17% over 50%.
And out of an estimated 30,000 votes in the last election, that is only about 5,000 people in a city of almost 100,000.
That’s only 5% of the overall population.
You are trying to sway voters to go with the crowd. In argumentation theory, this is a fallacy which appeals to
popularity, because it concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it.
Another example would be , because our neighbor cities have a 1% tax hike , so should we.
4) The argument that the government needs the money because of the COVID 19 crisis , is appealing
to emotion and begging for the money .
Do not the unemployed and struggling citizens also need their share of the money ?
Does the private sector need to suffer, and take a smaller piece of the pie, while government never
have to make cuts during the crisis ?
One can propose another $10 million dollars injected back into the private sector, and private
pockets, could also improve the quality of life .
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Government should present both sides, positive and negative, with public resources.
- Ricky Estrada