A Challenge to Dennis King & Jim Kastama

PV4I Challenges Puyallup City Council Incumbents Dennis King & Jim Kastama To Debate Claims on Tax Increases, Senior Center, Parks & Farmland

Considering incumbent candidates Dennis King and Jim Kastama avoided all forums they were invited to attend during this campaign season, we know it’s a long-shot, but PV4I founder and treasurer Chris Chisholm would love to sit down for a Facebook Live debate with his District 2 city council representative Dennis King to discuss the issues PV4I focuses on, namely fiscal management and use of open space in the City of Puyallup. There are also a couple of PV4I participants living in District 1 who would love a chance to challenge their representative Jim Kastama on the same topics in an open forum. With only two days left before the voting window closes, they will likely ignore the challenge, but we stand ready to simulcast a debate with their Facebook pages at the drop of a hat. The questions we would ask our city council representatives in a debate would include:

• Did you vote to increase property taxes by 6% on November 26, 2024? If yes, were you aware it would raise our taxes from $1.00 per $1,000 assessed value to $1.08 in 2025?

• Did you vote to increase taxes on PSE electricity and gas utilities by 1.8% on August 26, 2024, or know that it would increase the city portion of the tax rate from 4.2% to 6.3% on our monthly bills?

• Do you know what the cost breakdown of your failed 2023 Public Safety Building proposition was? Did you order an estimate to build just the police station portion of that proposition, or did you rely on the city manager to tell you that renovating and renting a building from the Benaroya Business Park would be a more feasible option? Do you know how much the renovation and rental will cost, and do you remember how much the 2023 proposition was going to cost?

• Did you vote to drain our Transportation Capital Fund into the costs of the police station renovation and rental, and then create a new Transportation Tax District, making yourselves the tax district commissioners, and then increase sales tax from 10.1% to 10.2% in the City of Puyallup?

• Did you know that 9th Ave SW next to the fairgrounds was completely torn up and repaved in 2021 using $2 million from our Streets Fund, and did you nevertheless vote to rebuild it again in 2025 into what you call a festival street for $5 million, instead of prioritizing the Meeker festival street that had been requested by downtown businesses for a decade?

• Do you think having tax increases on the agenda of a city council meeting is enough to inform city residents of what they should expect to be paying in the following year? How is it mudslinging when PV4I shared tax increase information with voters, while your ad hominem attacks calling PV4I names (political operatives, shills) isn’t slinging mud? What information did we present that’s not factual, and why do you call facts “misleading claims” yet then go on to justify every claim as factual?

On Tax Increases: King Thinks Voters Ignorant – Adds Signage Proclaiming He Keeps Taxes Low; Kastama Shows Desperation – Makes Flyers Saying Higher Taxes Are “Relatively Lower Taxes”

We understand that Dennis King and Jim Kastama were surprised when PV4I brought to light all their unadvertised tax increases. At first, they attacked PV4I members, all of whom are voters living in their own districts, as “political operatives” in an attempt to distract their followers from the tax increases. Then despite calling us liars, Kastama didn’t even try to counter any of our obviously factual information, and King went on to justify each and every tax increase, thereby acknowledging them as facts. Kastama later found a “spin” he thought people might be ignorant enough to buy, which was to say that because the “percentage” of property tax we pay in comparison to other jurisdictions “went down” by about 1%, it somehow means we are paying less in city taxes.

Every homeowner laughed at that spin. In 2025, we are all now paying $1.08 to the city for every $1,000 assessed value in our homes, instead of the 2024 rate of $1.00 per $1,000 assessed value, due to King & Kastama’s votes on November 26, 2024 to raise property taxes by 6%. In another attempt to deflect attention from his tax increases, Kastama went on a tirade on the dias during the October 21st council meeting, blaming the state for “raising taxes higher than ever before in the history of the state” even though he did the exact same thing to us in the city. Interestingly, the city portion of our property tax rate went up by the same amount as they state’s … 8 cents. At the same time, our school district rate went up quite a bit more, causing the city and state percentage to appear 1% less in relative comparison. Following Kastama’s lead, King started putting that same spin on flyers a couple days ago, and we wonder, does he and Kastama think voters are stupid? Don’t they know everyone was at that moment paying their dramatically higher property taxes due on October 31st?

King and Kastama have no pages on their websites focusing on issues such as fiscal responsibility, while their challengers Heather Schiller and Jeff Bennett prioritize fiscal responsibility at, or near the top, of their campaign issue pages. It will now be a few short days before we find out if voters want King and Kastama doing business as usual (behind closed doors) like they’ve done over the past 2 years while taking turns as mayor and deputy mayor, or if voters will choose to entrust Schiller, a career insurance professional, and Bennett, a retired Puyallup police officer in a second career bidding on solar projects, to manage City finances in a more transparent, responsive, and fiscally responsibly manner.

On Supporting Seniors and the Puyallup Activity Center: King Oblivious His Cuts To Senior Center Caused Loss Of Services Including No Activity Center Rentals; Kastama Scrambles To Find Parking After He Slates Senior Center Lot For Demolition With No Planned Alternative

A few of us helping with PV4I are seniors as well as members of the Puyallup Senior Activity Center. The hot topic all summer was finding out that city council, under the direction of Jim Kastama and Dennis King as mayor and deputy mayor, voted to give away the city’s Senior Center “AOB” Parking Lot for $1 – yes, that’s one dollar – to a developer planning to build condos, perhaps with ground-level retail space. We assume Kastama and King think tax revenues from the development will eventually benefit the city more than the value of the real estate giveaway, but they never included alternative parking for the average 100 seniors who patronize the Senior Activity Center every day. Seeing seniors upset, Kastama started dropping by the Senior Center during campaign season, spent city tax dollars to print up full color flyers advertising monthly “Desserts with the Mayor” at the Senior Center, and scrambled to get city management to hire a parking consultant to redesign on-street parking that he says will “add 50 spaces” for seniors to use who attend the Senior Center. Of course, that takes away on-street parking spots for library patrons, spray park users, and downtown business customers, including Anthem Coffee patrons in the same building as the Senior Center.

Meanwhile, candidate Jeff Bennett apparently realized Kastama might have been violating campaign finance rules by using Senior Center space on taxpayer’s dime … unless both were given equivalent access to Senior Center space. Bennett was apparently provided the option to rent space, so he hosted a “town hall” event at the Senior Center. According to people who attended, the Senior Center Director himself had to stay after hours to help set up the event since Kastama and King had cut staff responsible for Senior Activity Center rentals, making rentals unavailable for the past year. Apparently during the event, Bennett suggested a couple of solutions for Senior Center parking, from small scale ideas such as creating an interlocal agreement to use a portion of the post office parking lot across the street from the Senior Center, to investigating a paid/validated parking arrangement with the funeral home just west of the Senior Center. Bennett also suggested a larger-scale downtown parking proposal – something to the effect of closing down the jail (saving the $2+ million it costs to run the city’s misdemeanor jail, replacing it with the cheaper option of using the New County Jail which was built for the purpose of cities to save money closing their old jails) and as the fire and police are on their way out of using that space, replace the old building with a mixed-use parking garage, with spots for seniors on the ground level.

Meanwhile, Dennis King was so out-of-touch with senior issues that he didn’t know the Senior Activity Center was unavailable to rent all year due to his vote to cut senior center staff, along with librarian staff, economic development staff and other positions at city hall, all to make room in the city budget for the new police station building (renovation and 30 year rental). He claimed in his Facebook attack on PV4I, still featured at the top of his Facebook page, that we were somehow lying about the Senior Activity Center not being available to rent due to his staffing cuts. Every senior who patronizes the Senior Center, and every resident of Puyallup who ever tried reserving the Activity Center on the city website, knows it hasn’t been available. The first rental was Bennett’s event on September 24th that was required for the city to comply with campaign finance laws since Kastama was using the Senior Center for free. The second and only time the Senior Activity Center was rented this year was – wait for it – a fundraiser for King’s re-election campaign.

On Parks & Farmland: King Claims Credit For What? Adds Signage Saying He’s Saving Parks, Sends Mailer Promising To Protect Farmland Yet Takes No Stand on Knutsen Warehouses; Kastama Only Seeks Big Business Donations, Never Mentions Parks In Campaign, Makes No Statement on Knutsen Warehouses

When we saw Dennis King’s mailer a week ago claiming that he’s going to protect us from warehouses, and then when he started putting add-ons to his big campaign signs littering our streets that suggest he’s “saving parks,” we couldn’t help but to laugh. PV4I was founded to oppose candidates like King whose donors would take any chance sell out every farm they possibly could to warehouse developers … if voters weren’t vigilant. There’s really only one way any city council member could have credibility on this issue, and that’s if they took a stand opposing the impending Knutsen Warehouse development planned next to the tragic Van Lierop Farm warehouse that’s been sitting virtually empty since it was built. King never said a word about it, even as speaker after speaker went up to the podium during Citizen Comments last year to oppose the warehouses. If anyone is a shill when it comes to parks, farmland and warehouses, it’s Dennis King. He has never spoken up, voted, volunteered on city open space restoration projects, or worked in any way we know of to save a park. Please let us know if we missed something, and we’ll make correction.

Kastama is not an empty vessel on the question of farmland vs. warehouses. We know where he stands: in favor of warehouses. He voted twice to allow the Freeman Road farmland annexation for warehouse development, including final passage on December 8, 2020. We have seen nothing in his campaign publications or statements mentioning anything about advocacy for parks, let alone preserving farmland. That’s not a surprise since virtually all of Kastama’s campaign donations are from car dealerships, their family members, and other big business interests. Meanwhile, candidates vying to replace Kastama and King, Jeff Bennett and Heather Schiller, received exclusive endorsement from the Pierce County Environmental Coalition, the only environmental organization in the vicinity that makes endorsements.

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Please consider a donation of any amount, and invite your friends to like our Facebook page. Sponsored by Puyallup Voters for Integrity, PO Box 42, Puyallup WA 98371. No candidate or party contributes to, authorizes or controls this Political Action Committee which is registered at the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission. 2025 campaign season contributors over the $100 threshold so far include Chris Chisholm, PV4I Treasurer. When facts are presented, we want them to be accurate. If you find any errors, please email us with original-source evidence for correction.