Mr. Porter ignores a lot of the questions raised in my article.

1. Why has City Council been concentrating more and more money in the hands of fewer and fewer employees? Think: full retirement at 50 for police while cutting hours at Louden Nelson.

2. Why would City Council push a highly regressive utility tax instead of an equivalent sales tax? The 50% voter approval requirement applies either way, so it's not as if a sales tax would be harder to pass.

3. Why does City Council have a backward water pricing scheme that penalizes people who use less water?

4. Why did Council ignore the law (Proposition 218 -- like it or not) for a decade?

5. Why should a publicly-owned utility with no profit motive feel the need to overcharge on utility services?

6. What does the City plan to do with the extra tax money it will earn as a side-effect of the massive (124%) increase in water rates from 2004 through 2009?

As for Mr. Porter's personal attack regarding my travel habits, I suppose it is a crime that I have family members in France and Germany and that I visit them occasionally. Mr. Porter should note that the airport review I filed speaks of "over 20 years" travel experience, not of "regular" travel experience. I believe that Mr. Porter did a Google search on my name this afternoon, in hopes of digging up dirt. I found likely evidence of this in the access log for my Web server. If that's what Mr. Porter did, it was very sloppy, as Internet addresses can be traced.

In other news, I am happy to report that the NO on X Web site is mostly complete! Please check it out at www.NOonX.info/

Re: the comment about funding for the war on Iraq, that's a federal expense, and the federal government generally does not chip in to municipal operating budgets. Interesting question what the country would be like without war and weapons, but it doesn't help us in the here-and-now.