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City should cut its spending
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Dear Editor: This letter is in response to your front page article, “City hopes to hold millage rate in 2011.” That should read, “City doesn’t cut spending but finds money from your federal tax dollars and may not have to raise your taxes.”
Oh thank goodness for the generous federal government for giving to little ol’ Richmond Hill. I find it funny that we now equate raising and not raising taxes to holding the millage rate. The good news: the city has cut its expenses by 1 percent. The bad news: the city knew it needed to cut spending by 2.7 percent. But we shouldn’t worry, right? Because, as stated in the article, “that’s typical of what’s happening in the county and across the state.”
You know, you make a dollar and spend a dollar and 2 cents. I would have been shocked if the city balanced its budget. And, like children who found a jar of quarters, they are going to meet to figure out how they will use the money, just like those children meeting before spending the found money at the local candy store.
I think most of my neighbors have cut their personal expenses by more than three percent. I sure have. Why can’t the city? Please don’t meet on how to spend this money. A wise group of children (now good old boys) would put the money in the closest bank to save it so that, next year, when the budget is not balanced because the city hasn’t cut spending, they can spend some of this “found” federal money.
With a little luck the city may get 3 or 4 years down the road without raising taxes. Sure the city took a risk expanding infastructure. So what? What about the builders, developers and business people of all sorts that took capital risks to build for the new troops. Are they going to get a federal check for the risks they took?
While I live in Richmond Hill, my residence is outside the city limits. But I pay federal taxes and have a simple solution to the city’s next meeting. Cut current spending and bank the extra money, because I believe that the federal government should stop doling out my federal tax dollars for these bailouts!
 
Steve Myers
Richmond Hill
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