Santa Ana Residents Don’t Want Another Jail or Increase in Taxes

* Santa Ana residents beware!

City Hall is at it again. The mayor and the city manager want to rip you off in the form of an additional 1% utility tax to build a 450-bed jail west of Eddie West Field. They are already acquiring property through the Redevelopment Agency.

First of all, why don’t they just put it to the vote of the people to see if they want another jail in Santa Ana? Secondly, if the developer in south Orange County can come up with a plan to privatize a county jail, why can’t the city? Santa Ana does not need to be in the jail business nor should it be.

What the residents of Santa Ana need to know is that this $90-million-plus project is part of a larger scheme. The city thinks it will be able to save the $158 booking fee now charged for each (prisoner) they bring to the County Jail. If their new gem is not overcrowded by the first month or so, they will be able to book (prisoners) from other cities. Can’t you see it now, bring them to the Santa Ana Jail for our special price of $128 versus the $158 charged by the county.

Call County Supervisor Roger Stanton to see if he objects to another jail being built in his district. One of his employees is a City Council member and the mayor is counting on his support for higher office. Never mind the prudent questions of who is going to pay for the food for the prisoners. Who is going to pay for the personnel to serve the food? Why have we taken police officers off the street to become jailers and we do not have a jail? The city manager cannot balance his budget now, how does he expect to do it without raising taxes again or forming more tax assessment districts?

RON HEIKE

Santa Ana

* Citizens of Santa Ana, watch your wallets, the politicians and bureaucrats are coming. City officials are proposing a 1% hike in the utility tax to build a new jail. When are they going to learn that raising taxes is bad for our economy? The small businesses and the low-income community will be particularly hit hard, and in the bad economic state that we are presently in, they can only fall deeper in despair.

I also have a problem with the fact that they want to build yet another jail within the city limits. We already have the Orange County Jail. The building of a new jail doesn’t exactly enhance the city’s image, not to mention what it will do to the already tumbling property values. City officials contend that a new jail will help reduce crime, maybe they should consider hiring more police officers to do that.

City leaders should look to our city motto “Education First” for the answers to many of our woes. For it is education, not incarceration, that is going to make Santa Ana a better community for all of us. I urge all of my fellow Santa Ana residents to stand up and say, “No new taxes, no new jails!”

SEAN H. MILL

President, West Grove Valley

Neighborhood Assn.

Santa Ana