Choose your poison

Steve Rose, Publisher

Steve Rose, Publisher
srose@sunpublications.com

This really is the Twilight Zone.

Leading public officials are out selling the August quarter-cent sales tax, primarily for expansion of the jail, offering up all the reasons why. (I will give you those compelling reasons in a minute).

But, first, someone has to tell you the emperor wears no clothes. So, I guess I will do it.

While responsible citizens are quizzing officials about the merits of the jail expansion and pondering how they will vote, they unwittingly are part of a farce. No offense intended.

You see, the jail expansion is already under way. They broke ground last year, and it will be completed this time next year. It was paid for with a small mill levy increase.

That’s right. You can drive out to Gardner and see the cranes and the steel beams, and all the workers constructing a new 500-bed jail. The same 500-bed jail you will be voting on to operate.

What gives?

What gives is that the County Commission, with the strong recommendation of the sheriff, decided they had no choice but to move ahead with the jail, because our inmate population has quadrupled since the last sales tax for a jail passed in 1995.

We are so overflowing with prisoners we are sending them, expensively, to neighboring counties for housing.

So, you ask, how can the County Commission start construction without a vote, and why in the world are we bothering to vote when it is after the fact?

The answer is, the sales tax is really going for the ongoing operations of the jail expansion, not construction, which will run about $20 million a year. If the sales tax fails, then commissioners will have no choice but to increase your property tax, and commissioners know that the property tax is the most hated tax there is, particularly for senior citizens on fixed incomes.

So, really, all that is required in this campaign is a brief and polite ultimatum to voters: Choose your poison. Do you want the quarter-cent sales tax or a property tax increase?

Of course, that would not be very politically correct or politically very smart. Voters who are voting on a tax want to debate it, ponder it, and then decide on it. They don’t want to hear it is already a fait accompli. But it is.

I will go along with this charade and give you the top reasons to vote yes, besides avoiding a property tax increase:

• We are locking up more than a thousand inmates daily, due to increased crime and tougher sentencing. The sheriff desperately needs the space.

• The 1995 tax, which is ongoing, pays for operation of the previous expansion, but not this one. And, like the 1995 sales tax, this tax must run without a sunset, because there is no sunset on the need to house prisoners and run the jail.

• We get other public safety facilities with this proposed tax, including a much-needed crime lab and juvenile detention facilities.

• This is a tax you have been paying anyway. It has been going for schools. Now, it’s the county’s turn. So, it is an extension, rather than an increase.

• A third of the tax goes back to cities for roads, sidewalks, storm drainage, and other needed infrastructure. They need it, because in most cities, tax receipts are down.

There. You now have the arguments to vote yes. But, as I said before, the real choice is which poison you prefer.