Letter to the Editor:

Citizens of Cleveland/Bradley County, do you feel the barrels of those two revolvers in your back? One has a bullet labeled sales tax and the other is labeled property tax. The City Council, who is holding the revolvers, says to you that you get a choice as to which one we shoot you wtih, either way you're going to get shot. It seems the rationale for your shooting is that the school board and the city have some projects that need funding and since they don't have the money to fund these projects they have cocked their tax pistols and decided to just take the money.

Now, if I understand their rationale rather their irrationale, they need to extort more taxes because revenue is down. I wonder if they took the next step and asked the simple and obvious question as to why revenue is down? Could it be that revenue is down because people are spending less because they don't have it, or they are fearful of losing their jobs or being laid off, or perhaps because we are in one of the worst economic declines in recent history?

Evidently, none of these issues seem to have crossed the mind of the Council, the school board, or the Chamber of Commerce. They must be operating under the delusion that we all have a goose that lays golden eggs or we all have a money machine that we can just crak out more money to give them for their projects. I'm sure that many of you have projects that you would like to finish or start. A roof that needs repaired, a car that needs to be replaced, or house remodeling that is long overdue. I'm sure that in order to finish your projects that you simply go to your boss and tell him that you have these projects you need to finish, but you don't have the funds so you need an extra fifty dollars a month. Perhaps those of you that are retired, you just call Social Security or your company pension plan and tell them you need more money to finish your projects. They will tell you sorry, but you need to learn to live within your means.

Now I ask you, citizens of Cleveland/Bradley County, why is this so hard for the City Council and the school board to understand this simple rule of economics that we all have to live by; if you don't have the money, you wait until things get better or you save for it. I suppose the City Council rationalizes why wait, when they have two loaded tax pistols and all they have to do is stick them in the back of their citizens and threaten to shoot.

So stick'em up, the tax man cometh!

- Dan Kurbis, Cleveland, TN



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