The printed essay I read is from the San Jose Mercury News. I chose this article because I was interested to learn more about what the title was referring to. The title is, “San Jose residents oppose public safety cuts as budget worsens, may accept sales tax hike or reduced library hours”. This title caught my eye because a sales tax hike would affect my family, friends, and myself. A quote from chapter 14 that helps me explain why I chose this essay to analyze is, “Smith’s title draws special attention to what otherwise seems like a small part of the overall story”.
The essay is mainly about how an annual survey is given out to 1,000 randomly selected adults and how most of them were opposed to public safety cuts. Many residents would rather make cuts when it comes to parks and libraries. Many residents also would rather just swallow another tax hike than reduce the budget for public safety. As much as I don’t want public safety to be compromised, increasing sales tax doesn’t sound so good to me either.
The economy is suffering right now, and raising sales tax wouldn’t help many residents’ situations. The sales tax increase would be a quarter-cent, but no matter how high or low the increase, it still adds up. I realize that the city is unsure of what cuts to make first since they were forced on Tuesday to trim $9 million to keep the budget in balance. The city has even searched for savings in order to keep all or mostly all the programs in action. I completely understand the situation, but there has to be costs we can cut in other areas to ensure our public safety programs get as much funding as possible. Who knows what may happen to our tax dollars in the near future.
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