I was at Keller Auditorium the other evening for an event that was way overpriced, and the seats were 75% empty. It may as well have been this audience.

It's also kind of funny the way the residency requirement reads that even if you don't have a home in Portland, if you still think of Portland as your home; the $35 is still owed. Now how do you prove you don't think of Portland as your real home? Maybe we might need training in how to fake a polygraph? This probably comes in handy anyways with the increasingly Orwellian like governance in vogue presently.

Bob Clark, that's a really interesting point. Alternately, if you lived in Portland but stated that "I'm only staying in Portland because nobody will give me a gun so I can blow my brains out," would that exempt you from the tax?

I was at Keller Auditorium the other evening for an event that was way overpriced, and the seats were 75% empty.

This may be the result of increasing costs here and the continual pick pocketing that takes discretionary funds for those who might have been able to afford an evening at the Keller. I know that the water rate increases alone will be troublesome. At a meeting over a year ago, that very thing was brought up that this would be taking their discretionary money for other things, small businesses, restaurants, theaters, etc. will be feeling this as the price for living here increases. Add in the eventual tolls if the CRC moves forward, more money for parking downtown, etc. This thirst to extract more money from people is harmful to our community. Never mind those who only have to watch their "spending money", what about those who simply have nothing left to give?

how do you prove you don't think of Portland as your real home?

That's not just a Portland arts tax problem. The Oregon income tax raises the same question, with the same unsatisfying answer. Just ask Char-Lie Hales of Stevenson, Washington.

Maybe the City should devote some of the tax proceeds to hire this guy to channel dead Portland taxpayers for new artistic outlets.

If anyone's going to be paying more taxes, I'd just as soon it be dead people.

Talking about taxes? If you vote "yes" to put the "bio-hazard waste" referred to as Sodium Fluoride into our wonderful water, your water rates are going to go up. They just cannot tell you by how much as I asked a water bureau person today what the rates would be if people vote for fluoride, she told me they did not know yet because their finance department would have to give it to Char-lie Hayles to sign. Just a reminder that the voting machines could be rigged-how many voted for the "Arts Tax", kind of funny that they say it was 62%-doesn't that sound more like against than for?

To carry it further: now that the council has excused persons with incomes below $1000 in 2012 from paying the tax, if the tax is truly an income tax and not a head tax, then it can be levied only on income received after its effective date of December 5, 2012(which lets the dead off the hook) but also means that people who received less than $1000 between December 5 and 31 shouldn't have to pay.

It doesn't matter how many times they shuffle the deck chairs. The Titanic is still going down.

virginia,
Glad you brought up the voting machines.
It is a topic that needs in-depth discussion and I think some changes before I feel confident about our election returns. However, if one brings up the subject, many view this under the category of those who question as "Conspiracy theorists." Again as I have mentioned before, some subjects are put into that kind of corral so as not to be examined or changed.