During his first term:
Rich has challenged the financial status quo from day one insisting on better value for your tax dollars.
Rich set up a review of the Transient Lodging Tax by an outside group of professionals to insure accountability in its use.
Rich Chaired a joint committee to investigate city help with the expo.
Rich attends one County Commission meeting per week to ensure continued close communication between City and County.
Rich has taken unique and extraordinary steps to insure a livable Albany by helping to facilitate the joint purchase of technological equipment between the City and Linn County Sheriffs office that results in quicker communication between law enforcement agencies to keep us safer.
Rich has been a champion of upgrading our technology to achieve greater efficiency in police reporting, building, and planning.
Rich was instrumental, working with multiple agencies and business to get our kids the best chance for family wage employment thru the Pipeline Program.
Rich works hard to make sure you have the choice to determine the safety of your children in your neighborhood.
A Word From Rich:
With our government wanting to raise our cost of doing business, here are a few of my thoughts about it.
I just celebrated 32 years in business, Business does not now nor has it EVER paid tax!!! We pay trillions of dollars in what government calls tax, but we don’t pay it, We just collect it. We get all of our money from our customers, tax just becomes a expense of doing business. So who pays the tax?? You do when you buy our products or services.
Government loves to tax business, it is just counting on you to be dense enough to not know who is actually paying the tax, It hits you two fold, One, you have to pay the tax and two when the guys from outside who do not have to pay the tax sell the same stuff here, you lose your job.
Let’s put this into perspective: You bake cookies, you live in Oregon, your brother makes the same cookies but he lives in Boise, you sell the cookies at $3 per dozen, so does your brother, about a third of the cost is flour, butter, sugar etc, about 1/3 is the cost of labor, and the last 1/3 is power, phone rent and hopefully some profit for you. Government comes along and says we want to put a dollar a dozen tax on the manufacture of cookies but just in Oregon. So your cost is now $3.50 per dozen but your brothers cost is still 2.50 per dozen. You now have 3 choices, One, agree with your brother that he won’t sell cookies in Oregon, that is of course price fixing and you go to prison, Two, you go out of business, which is how your employees get put out of work, or Three, you lower your costs by having your brother make the cookies and you selling them in Oregon, So most of your employees still get put out of work and you are called a greedy outsourcing scumbag business guy who doesn’t care about people and should be fined by government…………..
So what caused the problem? Government made an expense on just some manufacturers and Oregonians are willing to buy products from outside sources without thinking of the consequences to local sources.
What is the solution? if government truly needs the money, you make a tax on all cookies at the end user instead of in the middle where it gets hidden in the cost of the product. That way the tax is smaller on each cookie but all cookies are taxed.. It doesn’t make any difference between a tax on cookies or if government raises the price of labor or the fringe benefits for labor, a raise in expense on us but not them is what causes the damage…So in the real world, you cookie bakers are representing American Business, your brother is representing China, and government???? that is just what they do. Whether this is $15 minimum wage, or mandatory sick leave, or a gross receipts tax, or land use laws that make it impossible to find a place in Oregon to work….. they are all expenses we have here that do not exist elsewhere..
Rich Kellum
Frustrated
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