The following letter to the editor was published in the Beach Reporter newspaper (TBRnews.com) on Thursday, January 26, 2012 in the Letters section. The Beach Reporter has a strict 250-word limit.
El Segundo making Chevron’s taxes too high
The city manager’s Chevron Shakedown must stop, including efforts to extort large “gifts” of money under threat of a $10 million annual tax hike. The city will suffer long-term damage to its reputation as a good city to locate a business.
Doug Willmore used false premises to construct a deceptive one-sided analysis for the Chevron property, rather than a true cost-versus-benefits analysis. It is unfair and dishonest to compare tax revenues generated per acre by the Chevron refinery with that of other local businesses. Land use in other South Bay cities is mostly residential and not three-quarters commercial/industrial as in El Segundo.
In his one-sided analysis, Willmore ignored the cost for the city to provide and maintain infrastructure and services for residents and businesses that would otherwise exist on the massive Chevron refinery property.
If the refinery never existed, that land would be mostly residential and some commercial. Tax revenues would be much less, and the city would have to provide and maintain infrastructure and services for twice as many residents at great expense that Willmore failed to include in his seriously flawed and biased analysis.
Willmore excluded some Chevron tax revenues. And he increased the number of acres and reduced the calculated tax revenue per acre by failing to account for the area of all the public streets, alleys, parks, and schools that would otherwise exist on the Chevron property.
If an accurate analysis shows Chevron is paying excessive taxes, will the city council reduce Chevron’s taxes and apologize?
Michael D. Robbins
El Segundo
Michael D. Robbins
Note: Although this letter to the editor is a short 250 words, it does a good job towards refuting the news media propaganda hatchet jobs against Chevron and Councilman Carl Jacobson by KCET SoCal Connected producer Karen Fochet (March 2, 2012 TV show, “Small Town Big Oil”) and L.A. Times writer Jeff Gottlieb. This letter pre-dated the KCET hatchet job by more than a month.
(This note was not part of the letter.)
El Segundo Police Officers' Association (ESPOA) Exposed