It’s an old rhetorical trick: if you can’t attack a political opponent legitimately, you create a strawman who is easier to attack. In their recent letter, Ellen and Stephen Rossi create and attack a strawman, actually one strawman and two strawwomen.
The Democratic Candidates, Brett Maria Blyshak, Becca Stein Gutwirth, and George Youngkin, have never said that they intend to raise Medford’s taxes.
They have correctly said and the official budget documents show, that the current council has dramatically raised taxes (34 percent since 2011) and severely cut services including police and recreation services. No one has or can refute those statements. They have promised to work to restore some of the lost services. Like the current Council, the Rossis seem to think that the only way to restore services is to raise taxes, but they are demonstrably wrong as BGY have said before and I will explain below.
Based on official documents, the current Council accelerated the rate of repayment of Medford’s debt in 2012 and even more in 2013. Further, the current Council brags and the documents show that they have substantially increased Medford’s annual budget surplus.
It’s a matter of simple arithmetic — if the current Council had chosen to maintain the rate of debt repayment at its 2011 level and not chosen to run up large budget surpluses, it could have maintained more services and/or made smaller increases in Medford’s taxes. And if the current Council had also made substantial efforts to obtain grants and explore shared services, the arithmetic could have been even more promising.
I expect the current Council and their supporters to disagree with BGY positions, but it would be more constructive if they disagreed with positions that BGY have actually taken.
Sincerely,
David L. Crawford
Co-Manager, Blyshak Gutwirth Youngkin for Council
