Tax Mentality Likely to Spread

Let this be a warning to Southern California taxpayers. Now that the visionary city fathers of Port Hueneme have shown the way, your view of water is going to be taxed. Hey, why not mountain views, too, and maybe sunshine? There is no end to the possibilities. Why should any city manager backed by an entrenched city council look for ways to reduce spending when it is so easy right or wrong--legal or not, to increase taxes? Face it. Taxpayers are not likely to unite and front the money for legal action.

The “spend and tax” approach of the Hueneme City Council may equate to a “one trick pony in a one-horse town” here, but your city is next unless the governmental “tax-at-will” mentality is turned around. Proposition 13 did it once. An initiative limiting term of office, perhaps? Like the drought and Saddam Hussein, bureaucracy just won’t go away.

JOHN A. WELKER, Port Hueneme