Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 23, 1995 TAG: 9505240031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
While rates have indeed stayed the same, property assessments have increased significantly. Multiply the tax rate times higher assessments and you get higher taxes, and more government spending. The aggregate increase in real-estate taxes for the three valley governments this year is more than $4.8 million, and personal-property taxes went up more than $3 million! When governments receive such windfalls, it seems they always find ways to spend all the money.
The proper way to set tax rates is to first develop a sensible budget, limiting spending to only that which is necessary and prudent, then adjust rates accordingly. Failing to do so, and opting instead for a budget based on the maximum number of dollars that can be collected from citizens, is irresponsible and reprehensible.
Of course, requisite notices have been placed in this newspaper stating that there really is an effective tax increase, but officials continue boasting that rates have remained the same. Nonetheless, $7.8 million more is being taken out of our pockets this year alone. How much will it be next year?
Local elected officials should adjust rates to stop these automated annual tax increases. The public hasn't been fooled.
JIM MARTIN
CATAWBA
Timing of article was inconsiderate
I'D LIKE to tell you about a mother. I stood beside her and her two daughters at a cemetery on a mountaintop here in Virginia two years ago. I was with her when the call came early one Sunday morning that her son was dead - a car accident. I'd like to tell you of her shock, grief and suffering, but I don't have enough paper. At what point, does the suffering end?
She buried her only son, and for two years you've driven her to her knees time and time again with insensitive articles and photos in your newspaper. Do you care what suffering you inflict upon a mother with constant reminders of her son's death and manner of death?
I'd like to tell you of the suffering of a mother on Mother's Day, grieving the loss of her only son. Why did you choose to print the article (May 12, ``Wreck victim sues drunken driver's estate'') on the weekend of Mother's Day? I concealed the article from the mother to reduce her suffering on Mother's Day. How many more such articles will come? Next Mother's Day, perhaps?
I think it's time you apologize to the mother and two sisters of Stanley W. Brooks for your consistent and inconsiderate disregard of their feelings.
JOHN DAILEY
ROANOKE
Tragedy may serve a positive purpose
IN RESPONSE to the excellent May 14 commentary by Aaron D. Schroeder and Gary L. Wamsley, ``The political roots of hating government'':
It was a thoughtful, perceptive dialogue attempting to discourage us all from blaming, finger-pointing and judging. It is simpler, particularly when faced with absorbing the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing, to focus all of our anger and frustration on an individual or group such as the Michigan Militia.
Doing deep soul-searching and asking the hard questions suggested in the commentary will be more painful, but also more productive. It will help us focus on possible solutions instead of increasing our fear and hate with inflammatory words and actions. If we, as a nation, can talk to and really listen to one another, perhaps the Oklahoma City tragedy will have served some positive purpose. It will be a double tragedy if we use it only to divide and separate ourselves from one another, thereby raising higher the walls of fear, hate and intolerance already so sadly evident in this country.
POLLY WILSON
ROANOKE
Inmates could train as painters
TRAVELING Interstate 81 north and south, I see good, not damaged, guard rails that perhaps only need painting being taken down, and new guard rails being put up in the same place. The new rails look like a cost-cutter style, but have shiny new paint. It seems with prisons busting at the seams, putting prisoners to work painting guard rails (approximately 324 miles on I-81) would be a good start on on a state prisons' rehabilitation program.
Now tell me, Virginia, that you don't have money for guards, but you have money for contractors to do all types of maintenance work. I know Virginia could tap taxpayers for enough money to hire a consulting firm to check on a private company for guards.
The grass also needs mowing alongside I-81. Rehabilitation program No. 2?
ROGER SHELTON
SALEM
Spewing hate for others' opinions
REGARDING Irene Ferguson's May 8 letter to the editor ``More terrorist attacks are likely,'' and Jean M. Phillips May 9 letter, ``Trading on hate of the president'':
They express a narrow-minded opinion of whining, desperate losers in last November's elections.
Ferguson said there have always been a few crazies in the country who need someone in authority and with the means to get them stirred up, and that Rush Limbaugh said he was on loan from God, but she felt he and his cohorts are on loan from the devil. That's awful for her to say.
Crazies are just that - crazy. They have nothing to do with mainstream Americans. Limbaugh and millions of others in disagreement with Bill Clinton and his cohorts are not crazy. Mainstream Americans love God, people and our country. There's no hate from Limbaugh, Sen. Bob Dole, Dan Quayle or others who feel Clinton is the worst excuse for a president since Jimmy Carter.
Phillips said America needs to think before voting in 1996. Well, we're thinking, and it will be compatible with last November's elections. For her to say Quayle displays hate and jealousy toward the Clintons is absurd. I suppose Quayle did have disgust for Clinton as he watched him stand in France at the 50th Memorial at Normandy Beach and in England, as I and others did, knowing he was such a wimp when it came to doing his part in serving his country.
Maybe when Clinton grows up, he'll not lace everything he does with lies, and not surround himself with those weird people in his administration - most of whom have fallen by the wayside. Ferguson and Phillips spewed out a lot of hate for people with differences of opinion. The blame for the horrors in Oklahoma City is the guilty parties' blame only.
VELMA BROOKMAN
ROANOKE
Eyes are closed to Wasena's troubles
AFTER reading Fran S. Barker's scathing May 12 letter to the editor (``Wasena's woes are exaggerated''), I had to respond.
``Confrontational zealots,'' ``rabble-rousers,'' ``dogmatic fanatics''? One would think someone had hit a raw nerve with Barker! `` Two blocks do not a neighborhood make.'' She's wrong again!
What happens on two blocks of any neighborhood affects the entire neighborhood. The crack user six streets over will hike the distance to rob a house to help pay for his or her addiction. ``Copulating and defecating ... performed on the streets?''? You bet. Because I've seen it in my neighborhood, Wasena and Barker's neighbors have seen it. She apparently hasn't been out of her beautiful home in quite some time and walked in Wasena Park, which is teeming with drug dealers, drug users and male prostitutes.
Mary Bishop's April 30 article (``Trouble in Wasena'') was not researched and written overnight. Wasena's ``dogmatic fanatics'' have taken drastic steps toward forcing improvement before the situation gets way out of hand, and before Barker wakes up one morning to get her newspaper from her porch and finds herself looking at real rabble-rousers making a drug transaction, and warning her to get back into her nice little abode before someone takes a dislike to her and starts peeling off gunshots in her direction. It doesn't take long for denial to allow a neighborhood to fall into total decay, and I'm afraid Barker is suffering a classic case of denial. Simply put, denial and apathy breed social decay.
Repugnant essay? I find stepping over vomit and human waste left by drunkards much more repugnant than Bishop's article. I find male and female prostitutes performing their business transactions in daylight much more repugnant. I find the use of preteens as police lookouts (who earn up to $300 per day) for drug dealers most repugnant.
Unless Barker wakes up, smells the coffee, and attempts to support the ``loud, confrontational zealots'' working desperately to curtail the almost certain doom of her lovely neighborhood, the article she found so disturbing will soon be used to pick up used needles, crack pipes and used condoms out of her manicured back yard.
ELIZABETH MURPHY
ROANOKE
by CNB