DEAR Loyal Customer: All of us here at the Aloha Plenty Widget Company hope that you had a very Merry Christmas. Now that the festive yuletide celebration is officially pau, and the new year is just around the corner, we have some good news and some bad news. Mayor Harris’ pitch
on property taxesFirst, the good news! In 1998, we are willing and able to offer you -- as we have in the past -- the finest widgets available in Hawaii. We take great pride in our product line and service, and appreciate your patronage.
Ready for the bad news? Actually, it's not that awful, at least from our perspective.
Because of rising costs and increased overhead, we are being forced to cut back on the number of widgets dispensed with every dollar purchase. Therefore, instead of 10 widgets for a buck, you will get seven widgets per dollar. Sorry about that but, hey, it's a recession.
To be honest, management did briefly entertain the thought of drastically slashing costs and letting employees go in order to keep dispensing 10 widgets for $1. But then we looked at what Jeremy Harris wants to do with property taxes and decided: Nah.
See, in 1998 the mayor wants Oahu homeowners to pay the same amount of property taxes as they did this year, even though real estate values have dropped as fast and as low as an Asian stock market.
His justification is that this would not be a true tax hike, technically, because residents would not be paying any more than they did this year -- even though their homes aren't worth as much.
And his motivation is benevolent: Harris doesn't want to cut any more county services and personnel because, he says, the city administration is already lean and mean.
That rationale sounds darn fine to us at the Aloha Plenty Widget Company. What's good for the City and County of Honolulu is good enough for us.
Therefore, along with this letter, please find an order form. Fill it out and send it in with your check. And remember, it's not really a price increase, because you'll still be sending us the same amount of money that you did in the past. Only, you get a smidge fewer products.
Mahalo for your understanding and patience. Thanks for realizing how difficult it would be for us to axe any more services and personnel to lower our prices.
In fact, we're a lot like Mayor Harris, who doesn't want to raise taxes or curtail government responsibilities either.
OK, maybe it's because Harris is keen on running for governor next year. The newspaper polls show that he is enjoying widespread popularity in the community.
Part of that, though, is because Harris hasn't been forced to balance the city budget by firing hundreds of employees and decimating departmental budgets like Governor Cayetano had to do to balance the state budget.
What the heck. We figured that since the residents of Oahu weren't making a big fuss about the mayor's plan to keep property taxes artificially higher, that you -- our esteemed clients -- would be amenable to the private sector doing the same.
IF you decide not to do business with us because of our new pricing policy, no hard feelings. We realize that there are other companies in Hawaii selling widgets, even though their line of wares and responsiveness aren't as good, in our humble opinion.
Hmmm, Mayor Harris doesn't have to worry about competition in providing city services.
The guy's a genius.