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Highlands Today

Political Pied Pipers

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Steve Farrell

Published: September 3, 2008

Our elected leaders, both city and county, are laying the foundations for the future by creating ways to raise taxes on us and are doing it with all the vengeance and hatefulness they can muster without regard for voters and taxpayers.

Sebring claims they will lower the millage to accommodate the 1-pecent fire assessment fee with a 10-percent cap. If one figures this out, a tax bill of $3,000 will become $3,300, then $3,630, etc. There goes the tax savings we voted on.

As property values plummet, we do not see assessed values go down. Quite the contrary; The pied pipers have engaged in yet other ways to raise taxes on already strained household budgets, and yet the pied pipers are gathering all of the taxpayer-rats, and we are following these lullabies like faithful serfs. They will do anything to circumvent the voters while they pay "consultant fees."

Highlands County wants to spend many dollars for a new facility, yet we see a pink albatross, Harder Hall, go down.

This building is more than ample to serve not only as a municipal building but also satisfy the county needs, while putting to work local contractors who could retro-fit it to accommodate the needs of those entities, without big outside interests or local money grabbers on these commissions wondering where their piece of the pie is.

We first elected them, then begged them not to raise taxes or fees, and these calls have gone unheard as they have the in-your face attitude about all of us living on fixed incomes.

So, as fire fees are instituted, home values drop, taxes go up, food-gas-utilities rise, these pied pipers are gathering and leading all the taxpayers down for extinction. These good ole boys and girls are the political pied pipers who have hidden agendas.

Finally, as they systematically tear at the very fiber of our beings, the pipers, despite the economy, are leading us like sheep to the slaughter.

Go down any street in this city or county, and you will see more houses for sale or being foreclosed because of their very actions.

These council members should be held in the same contempt they are showing toward us, and we should hold them all accountable. I would like to start a grass roots non-paying agenda that could be put on the local and county ballot to stop these reverse Robin Hoods from the havoc they will continue.

Until the taxpayers of the city and county are re-empowered, we are nothing but rats following the same composers and music of the political pied pipers of Highlands.
Steve Farrell
Sebring

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