Let supervisors know how you feel

Editor:

May I suggest to your readers that they visit the county’s Web site at www.madisonco.virginia.gov and take a look at the proposed budget (not the school budget).

I did and I can only say — hang on to your hats — because the supervisors have their spending hats on.

They are running out of money and this is the reason why they unilaterally imposed semiannual payments of county taxes. It will give them additional spending funds of about $6 million, which they will take out of your pocket and which you could have used from July to December.

It’s not a simplification of administration, cost savings and interest income. Present interest rates paid by Wachovia — a bank which nearly missed bankruptcy and has a long way to go to be out of trouble — and Stellar One, are miniscule.

The supervisors plan to spend $7.5 million for the courthouse, $4.5 million for the county administration building, $8.2 million for sheriff’s office communications and EMS, $500,000 for soccer fields at Hoover Ridge, $13.2 million for renovation of the middle school, $100,000 for softball field lights and $100,000 for computers. This leaves still open the new school, where figures under discussion are between $40 and $50 million (even though the superintendent does not even estimate any increases in the student body of 1,850).

Also, why is the county spending in excess of $150,000 a year in fees for advisers, when the most simple assumptions and forecasts are not provided?

We are looking to pay additional new county expenditures of a minimum $36 million and possibly more than $80 million over the next couple of years. The financial help by the commonwealth or the federal government will shrink in light of the falling tax revenues due to the ongoing recession.

Regrettably, the Madison County Board of Supervisors has shown very little interest in hearing our complaints or our ideas how to do things better.

So, what can we do to bring the supervisors into a more realistic and economic mind? Well, we just have to keep on complaining and complaining verbally or in writing until we are heard.

Another possibility would be to bring the capital spending ideas to a vote in this November election.

Herbert R. Putz
Madison County