UPDATE: This blog posting originally stated that Forrest Patterson had written the pamphlet against Measure K. It turns out he’s just passing them out. He doesn’t know who wrote it. We’ve made the correction below. 

With everyone who is anyone in Union City (councilmen, union leaders, active residents) pushing hard for the new, increased Measure K parcel tax on the June ballot, an unnamed Union City resident is leading a ragtag operation to defeat the tax.

Forrest Patterson told the Argus he was given a pile of four-page “No on K”pamphlets from a Measure K opponent outside a local donut shop, and now he’s distributing them around his neighborhood.

The pamplet makes the following arguments:

1) “The last time we voted on this measure, the city was facing the largest budget deficit … in its history and because of the crime rate was high they hired more police officers. So what has happened since Measure K passed in 2004? crime is still increasing.”

2) “The City Council voted themselves a 64 percent raise.” (The city would probably counter that councilmembers don’t make any more than colleagues in Fremont or Union City)

3) “The passed the (911) tax with out voter’s approval … The City Manager had the nerve to say, he wouldn’t know how to distribute the money back to us; he sure knew how to take it.”

4) “They lied to us about the cost to bring back our own Fire Department; at the time we were spending approximately $5 million with Fremont Fire. Now with our own Fire Dept. their budget is over $10 million a year.” (The city would retort that it didn’t lie, but that it didn’t account for huge increases in fire fighting costs, including salary hikes)

The pamphlet goes on about the red light camera system that was supposed to raise lots of money in fines, but never did, the thousands of dollars the city lost in legal expenses trying to keep a report about a former fire chief private, and the high salaries of many city workers, including fire fighters, who averaged $138,550 in 2006 with overtime.