Letters to the Editors

We've shelled out enough in taxes

Editor: It never ceases to amaze me how you use your editorial page as a bully pulpit for new taxes. Any kind of tax, every kind of tax.

A recent column chided Commissioner Steve Simon for switching parties. Your concern was the possible loss of a vote for a tax you favored. No mention was made of the true reasons for the switch, which had to do with ideology and the Democratic Party's war on family values.

Sunday's editorial pushes a tax to purchase land for conservation. What next? Don't know, but you will certainly think of something.

I have lived in Pasco County for 18 years and love this county and consider it home. I believe in conservation, but how much is enough? If you check with the property appraiser's office, you will find that a sizable percentage of the land in Pasco County is off the tax rolls because it is owned by government agencies and will never be developed.

We made tremendous sacrifices to preserve the coastline of Pasco County instead of having high-rise condos, which are tax dollar cash cows.

We paid for bond issues to build a parks and library system that is the envy of the Tampa Bay area.

We paid the taxes that built a state-of-the-art incinerator that considered the growth expected in Pasco County.

We paid the taxes that built the roads that we travel on, and the gas taxes for the expansion of these roads.

We pay for law enforcement and some street lights through our taxes.

We have paid for schools through taxes and bond issues even though we have not had children in school for more than 20 years.

After building Pasco County to a point that everyone wants to live here, you expect us to pay for the new growth? Enough is enough. You never mention that more than 40 percent of the population of Pasco County are retirees on fixed incomes who have difficulty meeting the high cost of medications that we all take.

Here are some ideas for raising revenue in the county:

Raise the cost of an occupational license for the sex shops to $50,000 per year.

Require all their employees to submit to fingerprinting and background checks. Charge for the service.

Pass a law enforcement fee to pay for the new growth.

Enact, as surrounding counties do, an ordinance to make people who have personal alarms pay for the false alarms.

Establish a municipal service taxing district in areas that require additional schools or playgrounds.

This is only a start. Growth must pay for itself. We have paid enough.
-- Ed Collins, Trinity

County's reliance on taxes unfair in uncertain times

Editor: The Pasco County government wants to borrow $57-million using 30-year bonds. The next generation will have the pleasure of paying for projects that might have to be replaced by then.

There seems to be no limit to how much the county can spend, but is there no limit to how much the taxpayers can pay?

The county and schools are planning a 16 percent increase in the sales tax and hope to get $31-million a year from that. The county also expects to receive $2-million a year in cigarette and sales taxes.

Instead of burdening the citizens with debt, they should limit their new spending to the $2-million a year that they expect to get back for sales and cigarette taxes and save us the interest burden. Then in 30 years they will have all their projects completed and the next generation won't have to pay the bill.

We are now in a recession, perhaps worse. Many people have lost jobs or had their income reduced. This would be a good time to clean out the dead wood from the county payroll and give pay cuts to the remaining people. If the county wants to share in the taxpayers' good economic times, they should be willing to share in the bad economic times.
-- Charles Derer, Hudson

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