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Highlands Today

Cutting Taxes Sounds Great, But Will It Really Help?

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 17, 2008

The easiest thing to say to an elected leader is "Cut the budget!" The hardest thing for an elected leader to say to his or her constituents is: "Cutting the budget is the wrong thing to do." We've heard both of these things recently during county budget discussions. It's our opinion that making drastic cuts is the worst thing the county could do - until there is no other alternative.

It's simple to just say "cut taxes," but the hard thing is to explain where those cuts are made and the impact the cuts will have on people living here.

Our county can darken street lights, remove traffic signals, not pave another inch of roadway, cut our law enforcement budgets, go to one garbage pickup day per week - or drop it altogether, cut ambulance crews, lock up our few recreation areas and let it return to the wild and fire half the county staff. We can do all that and cut everyone's taxes until we're hardly paying a dime. Then we can watch every business die off and almost every citizen move out of the area because quality of life is so poor. But, we believe, the majority of Highlands County residents want something more than that.

We want a fiscally conservative county government that also understands that we will have many needs once this bust is over - and it will be over. The last thing we need to do is take 10 giant steps backward during this temporary economic downturn.

Of course we all want any waste removed from the budget, and if anyone can point out that waste, please point it out. But one man's waste is another man's necessity. And anyone who takes a reasonable look at the county budget will see that it's not loaded with pork. Regardless of the claims, our county commission is tight with our money. We might disagree with some decisions, but Barbara Stewart, Andrew Jackson, Guy Maxcy, Edgar Stokes and Don Bates are a long way from tax and spend liberals.

It's clear that unless the economy improves big cuts are coming in the county budget. There's no avoiding it, and we'll do what we have to do. But we can't decimate our county's services and offerings to the public until we have no other choice. It would be a big mistake.

People are hurting in Highlands County. Hardly any business has been able to maintain full staffing. Cuts are everywhere. Some businesses are failing. But these things are not due to our county budget. They are because of a nationwide housing bubble that burst, real estate speculators, bad loans, the price of oil and consumer confidence. Now if our county commissioners can fix all those things, then go for it. Otherwise, we must carefully navigating these tough times and try to come out of it as whole as possible.

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