Council should’ve balanced budget

By the inability of the Howard County Council to reduce the county budget, our councilmen must be telling the taxpayers that there are no services provided to Howard County that could be effectively provided with fewer employees or reduced work weeks, that using our tax money to provide 14 paid holidays to the people that actually work for us is a good thing, that paid lunches make sense, that there are no areas of county government that can be streamlined, and that it is acceptable to pass a deficit budget without addressing any of these options.

Cutting budgets is never easy nor popular, but deficit spending in lieu of these cuts is irresponsible. They project that this budget will force the county to use approximately $3 million from the operating balance.

Mr. Ortman commented that the people who are responsible for building these funds should share them until they are gone. The people responsible for building these funds are the taxpayers!

Taxpayers have had to make difficult cuts in their budgets to provide the county with these taxes. Still, some are losing their jobs, their homes and their businesses.

We deserve to have a council that ensures the solvency of the county by passing balanced budgets that keep taxes low and provide the necessary services to our residents in the most cost-effective manner possible. Our council didn’t do it.

One lone dissenter, Paul Wyman, voted against this budget. Round of applause for Mr. Wyman!

Rhonda Reyburn, Kokomo

Let’s back merchants businesses, neighbors

It seems like, over the years, I’ve heard a lot about the revitalization of downtown. I know there are many empty buildings downtown, and that’s a shame, but there are other parts of town that need to be revitalized as well.

What about the strip center on West Boulevard that looks half-dead? You would think that would be a great location for something.

What about the Kokomo Mall, a great location, but nobody pushing for revitalization there? How about all of the empty stores east of Wal-Mart? That’s a great location with plenty of parking and good access.

How about doing something special for all of those businesses that closed or nearly closed from the months of no access on Sycamore and Dixon?

I know times are tough, and as much as I would love for all buildings to have prosperous businesses, it just cannot happen. If we as a community really want to help our local businesses, we need to think long and hard about where we want to spend our support and our dollars.

Let’s try to work even harder at supporting our local merchants, businesses and neighbors.

Bob Cole, Kokomo

Do Democrats have something to hide?

I attended Joe Donnelly’s town hall meeting in Kokomo and found that many, including myself, were angry about what the government is trying to do under Barack Obama. Rep. Donnelly said he had not made up his mind about how to vote on the health-care plan. I suspect he will vote for it but did not want to tell us.

Rep. Donnelly told us how Medicare is heading for bankruptcy and gave the impression that the new health-care plan will fix this. It will not.

The government has not been able to fix Medicare for at least a decade. What makes them think they can fix it by growing the problem bigger with the new health-care plan? Let the government prove they can do health care right and fix Medicare first, then we might have a basis for dialogue on a larger role for them.

We are continually told that there will not be rationing, we can keep our insurance, it will not cover illegal aliens, it will not provide abortions, and that there will not be death panels. These may not be in the bill specifically, but when the Republicans tried to put an abortion exclusion, a guarantee that you can keep your current insurance, and that illegal aliens would not be covered into the bill specifically, the Democrats voted it down in every case.

What they plan to do is put these things in as regulations and interpretation when it gets to the agency that will administer the plan.

The death panels will come when there is a budget that is set by Congress that they must meet and the only way to do that is to create long delays, i.e. rationing, or deny coverage to various individuals that they deem not eligible. It will not be called death panels but you can be sure that the old will be one of the first groups excluded for medical care, simply because they are old and not deemed as useful to society as the younger ones.

Rep. Joe Wilson called President Obama a liar when he gave his address to Congress about health care. I ask you, if the president is not lying, then why won’t the Democrats put the very things people are worried about in the bill specifically?

The Democrats also voted down a specific proposal to put the bill on the Internet for 72 hours before a vote. It looks to me like the Democrats are trying to hide something, and if they are successful, we the people are not going to like the result.

James D. Boyd, Ph.D., Galveston