Increase? How About Decrease!

Letter to the Editor
Published: March 13, 2008

To the editor,

There certainly was a lot of news in the February 28th edition of the paper; most of it bad for the Orange County taxpayer.

However, I must say that Nancy Alexander’s “The Way I See It “article is a must-read, and should be read by all of our elected officials and county and town staff at least twice. It certainly contains some eye-opening information. I am not sure many county officials can relate to the plight that some of our county’s residents face.

The economic facts are there has been a dramatic downturn in the national, state and local economies: Fiscal responsibility is the order of the day, not reckless spending.

Recent economic events: Stock market lost 15 percent since the first of the year; regional real estate values have also dropped 15 percent in the last nine months; neighboring jurisdictions’ foreclosure rates have jumped as high as 58 percent since November 30, of last year; the state is experiencing a 1.5 billion dollar budget short fall; fuel prices have increased 30 percent in the past year (gas $2.25-$3.05, soon to reach $4 gallon); food prices increased almost 6 percent in 2007, and are projected to increase by another 5 percent in 2008; milk is hovering at the $4 a gallon mark.

A number of families have negative disposable income after they pay for necessities, which in most cases means to get by they are building up massive credit card debt. Health care costs are soaring; some families and seniors living on fixed incomes have to make serious decisions on what they can spend their money on: heat, food, medicines, etc.

While all this is going on, the elected officials in Orange County are planning to saddle their neighbors, friends and all Orange taxpayers with a 22 percent property tax increase. With real estate values in recession, the county should be decreasing our tax rate by 10 percent. Rolfe’s proposed budget of $165,568,671 is a huge increase over last year’s and contains at least $46 million in borrowed monies for the new middle school. This is money that multiple generations of Orange County taxpayers will be paying back with interest over the years to come.

The sad part is the school board is projecting a capital improvement plan of $158,000,000 by 2013. That’s right, another $158 million, which is on top of the millions of dollars in school debt already on the books (two middle schools and the high school renovation). I feel this is a very irresponsible plan to put forward.

But, I am not surprised; I have yet to hear this school board express any concern for the taxpayer. The school system will put us so deeply in debt for years to come there will be little money left for anything else. On top of all this, the school board wants to raise teachers’ salaries by 7 percent to be competitive with other localities. How about 3 percent? I have never heard a teacher say they went into education as a profession to get rich.
Soon, there will be no fear of a water shortage in the town of Orange, because you won’t be able to afford to flush the toilet. Maybe outhouses will be making a comeback.

The middle school site came to the forefront once again, with Mr. Johnson claiming those against the site which includes two board members were involved in “conspiracy wacky-ism”. Mr. Johnson continues to claim that “studies commissioned by the county were all performed by reputable agencies… Results from those tests suggested there was no correlation between electromagnetic fields and a long list of symptoms and maladies Burkett said he’d come across in his research.”

“Tests suggested” does not mean there is not a possible correlation. Back in September of last year after Mr. Johnson had claimed the “studies commissioned by the county showed no correlation,” I made a FOIA request for a copy of those studies and was told there were none. Even the after-the-fact study by the school board’s architect doesn’t say the site is without risk. So, Mr. Johnson, please make available a copy of those studies the county had done, so maybe this argument can be put to rest once and for all.

John Bangs
Orange