Will we for once “Just say no!”?

Dear Editor,

I wonder how many of your readers in Murray and rural Clarke County are aware that they hold in their hands the opportunity to “Just say no!”?  A financial fiasco is sneaking up on Clarke County.  A “Xenia” like disaster is being prepared for the water users of Osceola City Water and Southern Iowa Rural Water Association (SIRWA) alike because the many governing bodies of Clarke County are in bed together again.  Of course, they never got out of that unholy bed.

The Clarke County Reservoir Commission (CCRC) and the various real and quasi governmental bodies that make up it’s sponsors are again asking the two remaining rebellious entities to allow them to collect into eternity a 1% local option sales and service tax.    “Come on.  Pay your fair share!”  they say “Or we’ll stick it to you in your property taxes!”  

Well don’t fear, if this lake is or is not built your property taxes will go up, but so will your water bills. Maybe, in the same way Xenia’s patrons fear their water rates may increase.  That is, exponentially, as the Clarke County and it’s cities go broke trying to pay off millions of dollars of debt incurred for a supersized Lake Boondoggle.

Oh, yes, they have been scolded by those whose approval they need as recently as June 2009. You may have heard, they dreamed too BIG!  Surprise! Surprise! The CCRC and their federal planning assistance, the NRCS, have been reminded that a lake that confiscates private property by eminent domain must be designed in size for water source only.  That’s easy they say – we’ll just change a few rules, a few standards, a few quantifications, a few numbers and proceed as we want.  Brazenly oblivious to and seemingly ignorant of real world arithmetic and of the severe and long trending downturn in local, state, national and global economies, they bull doggedly forge ahead with their self-serving plans. Will you let them?  Are you mad yet?

    Will voters bend at the waist again, even when the ball is in our court, so our government in all it’s greedy forms can run amuck with our tax dollars?  We bite the bullet and scrape for money to pay our own bills, while those in control of our economic futures spin webs of deceit, propose to steal private property, spend money like it grows on trees, tax us unmercifully, and indebt us foolishly to the point of bankruptcy.