'Strange' stuff accompanies bug-tax ballots

[question everything]

Saturday, July 16, 2005

'Strange' stuff accompanies bug-tax ballots

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer
North (San Diego) County Times

SAN DIEGO ---- Hundreds of checks, $6 in cash, Jehovah's Witness pamphlets, a marriage certificate, a dog license, an invitation to a Wisconsin teen's high school graduation, pornography and a blood-sucking tick taped to a note.

Those were some of the stranger things that home and business owners mailed to county officials ---- along with more than 212,000 ballots ---- in a recent mailed-vote election in which voters approved tripling their annual county pest-control fees, county officials said this week.

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The county sent more than 700,000 ballots to property owners in May, complete with return postage, asking them to agree to triple their fees to increase the program's budget to help protect the public from deadly diseases like West Nile virus and the plague, which can be spread by mosquitos and rats.

County supervisors announced Tuesday that property owners approved the increase in a count of the returned ballots.

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http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/07/16/news/top_stories/22_29_457_15_05.txt

Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at [phone] or [e-mail].