Economy to stay bad; county must cut staff

Editor:

As someone who is in the “trenches” every day, I cannot help but comment on last week’s headline, “More county tax hikes coming?”

What does it take for both elected and appointed government officials to understand the situation we are all facing?

Allow me to tell you of my own situation. I own a small, commercial printing business. Our niche is direct mail (that’s junk mail to most of you all). We print for politicians, of all stripes, and for charities. The response rate for charities is 60 percent of what it was, at this time, last year. This means that my business is down almost 50 percent.

What am I doing about it? All I can do, because increasing sales is not an option, is to control my costs. I’ve done that by not replacing an office worker, when she left to join the army, laying off a press operator late last spring, and, the other day, I laid off a fellow who did prepress (made plates and arranged art).

It has made me sick to my stomach. I sleep about four hours a night. I use to have eight employees. There is no choice if I am to survive.

When a politician, and yes Mr. Dean, you are a politician, thinks that honest input from the citizenry is “abuse,” well, then, what kind of thought processes do you think that fellow has? This economy is not going to get any better any time soon. The county government is going to have to sharply cut all expenditures, and a lot more staff than anyone is thinking of, at this time.

It’s not going to be pleasant to lay off friends and family. But, what is the alternative?

I’m thinking that a lot of folks in Madison County own their homes out right (they either inherited them, or built them) and do not have mortgages where the tax money is escrowed on a monthly basis. This new program, where paying taxes twice a year may make the “medicine” go down a little easier — the end result is the same.

I don’t think anyone wants to see a long, lengthy list of foreclosure notices being published in The Madison County Eagle on a weekly basis. But, that could easily be the result if elected officials continue to raise taxes to fund programs that “they” think all citizens want and/or need.

Joe May
Fairfax and Etlan