First, help us who live here

Dear True,
A couple of things I found worrisome at the last Grand Marais City Council meeting:
1) The council had a knee-jerk endorsement of proposals to: first--indefinitely continue the one-percent sales tax for some loosely defined "Infrastructure Improvements." NOT that we don't need them; we do. But the poorest of the poor in our county will bear the greatest burden of this tax. Sales taxes fall most burdensomely on the poor, unlike income taxes. Even property taxes, while regressive, are less so than sales taxes. And second--add a new sales tax on recreation, which presumably will be paid by all locals including children who ski, golf, swim... or as the dear Beatles once said, "If you take a walk, I will tax your feet." But my greatest worry is that, at least so far as I have heard, the recreation tax is not even subject to a referendum. Unlike the one-percent tax, which I can hardly wait to cast my vote against. There is this incredible disconnect between the haves and have-nots in Cook County and the HAVES don't have a clue what it is like for the rest of us, for whom a one percent tax means going without something we urgently need or not being able to pay our utilities bills and getting them shut off.
2) The Sawtooth Cottages plan for affordable and market-rate housing, which has had my fullest support, is necessarily changed by the fact that the Land Trust is claiming it cannot produce the "affordable" units at the price they originally quoted. Leaving aside the issue of what is affordable (which I have written about before), several people told the Council that local contractors ought to be allowed to bid on the revised specs. Locals had agreed that they could not contract at the prices quoted by the Land Trust but now several claim that they can compete on the newly defined terms and can produce an even higher quality home.
I am all for keeping our money in our local economy! I salute those new and innovative businesses like North House Folk School and the Whole Foods Coop who have brought new jobs, new tourist trade, and astonishingly successful economic ventures that sustain us all.
As for traditional tourism, if it can't support itself maybe it ought to go the way of the horse-and-buggy rather than break the backs of the low-income locals through new regressive taxes, and new taxes creating ANOTHER tourism board that has no electoral oversight.
Sincerely,
Nancye Belding
Grand Marais