The Billion-Dollar Pima County Bonds Will Hurt Seniors

The 2010 census shows nearly 1/4 of Pima County residents, over 200,000 people, as seniors aged 60 or over, and growing fast.  I myself will be 78 in January and, like most seniors, live on a fixed income and am dependent on Social Security.

There will be no Social Security increase even though food went up, according to recent news reports, 6.5 percent.  New SS recipients, like my late cousin’s widower, will also take a big Medicare hit.

To really “invest in ourselves,” we need to use our limited income for our basic needs, and not some nice ideas — and certainly not to reward Yes campaign funders, some of whom are “non-profits” paying no property tax who stand to receive tens of million from the bonds.

Our legacy shouldn’t be leaving our great-grand-kids to pay until 2043.

Albert Lannon
Avra Valley Coalition

About Albert Vetere Lannon 103 Articles
Albert grew up in the slums of New York, and moved to San Francisco when he was 21. He became a union official and labor educator after obtaining his high school GED in 1989 and earning three degrees at San Francisco State University – BA, Labor Studies; BA, Interdisciplinary Creative Arts; MA, History. He has published two books of history, Second String Red, a scholarly biography of my communist father (Lexington, 1999), and Fight or Be Slaves, a history of the Oakland-East Bay labor movement (University Press of America, 2000). Albert has published stories, poetry, essays and reviews in a variety of “little” magazines over the years. Albert retired to Tucson in 2001. He has won awards from the Arizona State Poetry Society and Society of Southwestern Authors.