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Highlands Today

County and taxes

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Robert K. Munsell

Published: December 7, 2009

Gary Pinnell's informative article of Dec. 2 points out that the good old boys on the County Commission want to tax your Internet purchases made in other states, increase your license plate fees and curtail your homestead exemptions. What a shock! The County Commission has been riding a tax and spend gravy train consisting of double digit annual spending increases for years.
This has funded years of very generous annual pay raises for all employees, $3,000 bonuses for the Sheriff's Office, the elaborate unnecessary ball park, the road to nowhere (also known as the Sebring Parkway or Carl's Catastrophe), a new layer of top level bureaucrats and thousands of dollars worth of stolen, lost and/or misplaced taxpayer funded property, etc.
In an area of deep recession where one out of six adults are out of work or underemployed, hundreds of county family homes are repossessed, small businesses are closing and food banks are overwhelmed with hungry families, any freshman economics student realizes that raising taxes is pouring gasoline on the flames of recession.
Instead of trying to find ways to increase our taxes, why doesn't the commission find ways to cut spending?
Cut staff (start with the employees who stole the chain saws, binoculars, gasoline, etc.)
Stop pay raises (Florida state employees have not had a pay raise in three years), eliminate take home county vehicles (Pinellas County has 2,300 vehicles with 10 take home authorized; how many does Highlands have?), eliminate most cell phones and other perks like free education for staff.
Lastly, the commissioner's bloated salaries should be cut; they make much more working part of one day a week than most workers in this county that are fortunate enough to have a job, make in a week.
Do I think the commission will adapt any of these suggestions? Of, course not. Why do we keep re-electing these people?
Robert K. Munsell
Lake Placid

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