It was all over the Advance and Monticello Live that the Road Tax issue won by a landslide. REALLY? Did you not expect it to win? This is exactly why your choices at the ballot box were written the way they were – so that the tax would pass exactly as the Quorum Court wanted it to. You did not have the choice to keep the 1% road sales tax as it was originally.
After you read about the big landslide on the front page of the paper, you turned the pages and found an editorial about how only 8% of registered voters voted. Does that surprise anyone? The sales tax did not even need that many votes to win. Why? Because you are the victim of the Delphi Technique that is used to assure that a certain special interest group gets what they want when they want it. That is the primary purpose of special elections.
Your only choices were to vote for it or against it as it was written. We all want good roads for Drew County, but you were also threatened that if this tax did not pass, the Quorum Court would raise your property taxes. You did not get to vote for the tax as it originally appeared on the ballot the first time it was voted in. So, with the threats from the Quorum Court regarding property taxes and you having no other alternative, the tax was passed.
Let’s talk about a landslide. Only 8% of registered voters voted. Oh my gosh – doesn’t anyone care? That is not it at all – why waste your time going to the polls to vote for or against a tax that you already know will pass?
There was a great deal of information in last week’s paper and on Monticello Live urging you to vote for the tax because of the property tax threat. But what really got me was that a certain person who works in the County Clerk’s Office, but who also writes for the Advance, spent her entire column discussing how important the sales tax is for the county because as part of her job, she sees the bills she writes for the county. This is a complete conflict of interest. This person should work only for the paper or for the county, but not for both. I know the County Clerk needs help, but isn’t there someone in another office who is not needed and who could move to that job?
I believe we need good roads, and we need the 1% sales tax. However, the way it was handled and written and the threats that went with it were unnecessary. We won’t be bullied. It seems the Quorum Court members are taking lessons from Washington, DC, in the Delphi Technique and in bullying voters. Watch out – you may need our vote on something in the future, and we will remember how badly this election was handled.