Readers' Forum, July 18, 2018: Keep an Eye on Your Portfolios | Letters to the editor



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Keep an eye on your portfolios

Your Vigo County Council has voted a 1 percent tax on food and beverages. It will raise between one million and two million dollars a year to be used for the operation of a convention center. The county has already committed $ 10 million to a convention center with the city to match that amount. At one point, UIS was a partner, but local politics came into play.

The Food and Beverage Tax was approved at a special one-day meeting of the legislature where it has been blocked several times before. With the tax in place, it seems likely that large projects will follow soon. It will be administered by the Capital Improvement Board. It consists of two county commissioners, the mayor, the director of redevelopment and a representative of the visitors office. Convention centers are not cheap. All of this will finally come from us.

Next, we will face the economic imminence of our solution to prison overcrowding. Your commissioners have planned a mega-prison to double our ability to incarcerate people who are waiting for judgment most of the time and who can not afford to pay a court bond. Their plan was to increase your county's income tax by 1% and fund a mega-jail that would ultimately cost between $ 120 and $ 140 million. This would be the most expensive building in the county's history.

The plans of the commissioners did not get the support of the community or the county council. These plans are not dead. After the vote on the food and beverage tax, City Councilor Vickie Weger said in an interview with WTHI that "the prime rate is expected to rise another one or two times this year, and that will add a huge debt to the business. whole prison project we want to avoid this.We need to have a lot of consideration for the taxpayers of Vigo County.I think it should be one of the biggest things we have to think about is to move the thing As fast as possible … So I think that August should be a very big month.This is also the month when the board will prepare a budget for 2019. So we have a lot of money to

All these projects will be huge tax expenditures, since they suck up a large part of the local capital, where the new / renovated schools will come from, a new police station, a better treatment of the health mental health and addiction, vocational training and economic development, parks and riparian improvement? Does not it seem appropriate to take a clear and very public look at all the implications of these costly plans before your taxes and your county's peak of debt multiply? Should taxpayers who have been excluded from planning not have the opportunity to make their priorities known?

And every time politicians speak to tell us that we must hurry to spend a lot of money to save money, should not we really be trying to keep an eye on our portfolios?

– Mike Gordon, Upper Land

The chaos of Mexico can affect the United States

During the nine months of the Mexican electoral process, 145 Mexican politicians and candidates were murdered at the request of powerful syndicates of drug traffickers and human trafficking.

Yes, my American compatriots, accept the fact that these cartels exercise their hegemony with impunity throughout the Mexican territory. But the problem is that these cartels, in this nation-state cartel, are only thriving for miles beyond the southern gate of America. And soon, can even stand at your door, John. Q. Public

For the most part, the average American has no idea what is going on with respect to the deleterious influences of these drug cartels on America. today "south of the border, in the manner of Mexico. "

– Earl Beal, Upper Land

The New Commitment for a New Leader

I think former Congressman Lee Hamilton put his finger on the head with his essay on Oath of Allegiance (Tribune -Star, Sunday, July 8.)

The whole political Donnybrook surrounding President Trump is due to the unrealistic expectations created by our old pledge of allegiance. you will have the opportunity to update the commitment made in the twenty-first century and thus restore peace and goodwill throughout the country by voting for a new realistic promise:

I will pledge allegiance to flag of the United States of America

And to the dictatorship for which he stands

A nation, under Trump

With freedom and justice for …

All Protestant Republicans white man.

Just pull the handle "Republic groin "

– George Bakken, Terre Haute

Collusion is not a crime

With all the current political current on Trump and Putin in collusion during the 2016 US presidential campaign, It should be noted that the "collusion" between a political campaign and a foreign government is not a federal crime in the federal criminal codes of our country.

In other words, one can not be prosecuted under a charge known as "collusion" with a foreign government. Collusion (in and of itself) is not illegal in America.

Whatever your political belief, it is always better to understand what constitutes or does not define criminal behavior in our constitutional republic. Knowledge is power.

– William Greenwell, Terre Haute

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