My Sunday column

My two cents ...

Whitfield County Commissioners couldn’t pick a worse time to talk about spending tens of millions of dollars for recreation. With the local economy stuck in neutral and many county residents struggling to pay bills, there’s probably not going to be a whole lot of support for unnecessary spending.
The cost of just about everything is up, including county property tax assessments, so why would residents reasonably be expected to support a tax hike to pay for baseball fields?
There has been a metamorphosis in county government in regards to recreation. Was it only just a few short years ago commissioners told former county administrator Bradley Arnold that recreation was the least of their priorities? Now, building parks and ball fields seems to have vaulted up the to-do list.
Personally, I’d prefer the commissioners concentrate on roads and law enforcement and if those things are taken care of adequately, they should cut taxes.

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I like David Pennington. The mayor of Dalton won office promising to do things differently and has followed through with that vow.
Not that there haven’t been missteps, but Pennington has pushed hard on his cost-cutting, tax-cutting agenda.
Recognizing that city government’s first responsibility is to the taxpayers, and not to the bureaucracy itself, Pennington and the city council have pushed hard to deliver a leaner government. Current plans to trim almost 30 jobs from public works department will surely brings howls of rage from some quarters, but I’d bet the majority of Daltonians support the plan.

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I am about as anti-tax as you can be, but the proposed reduction in the freeport tax concerns me.
Philosophically, I would like to see it eliminated completely, not just the 20 percent figure now proposed.
But how will the loss of funding be replaced by our city and county governments and by the city and county school systems?
If the net result of the freeport reduction is higher property taxes, then how does the average taxpayer benefit?
It is a dereliction of duty on the part of our elected officials to ignore this very real issue and treat it as something that can be easily dealt with later. In particular, how can the city and county school boards support this measure unless they can give an adequate explanation on how they will make up for the funding loss?
Our elected officials’ first responsibility is to taxpayers, not to private industry.
Let’s do what we can to help the carpet companies through these difficult times, but not by shifting the tax burden onto individuals.
Supporters of the freeport reduction need to make their case a lot better than they have so far.

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The Olympics aren’t what they used to be in the good old days.
Sure the athletes are superb, better than ever in fact and the overall spectacle is ... well ... spectacular.
What’s missing is the wonderful tension created by the Cold War.
Growing up, the Olympics for me was an Us Against the Commies thing. Beating the Russians at anything — anything — was cause for celebration. And it wasn’t just the Russian commies who earned my enmity. Seeing one of our boys wallop a Cuban boxer was about as good as sports could get.
But all is not lost. Though the Chicoms are pale substitutes for red Bolshevism and the Cuban Threat seems to have waned, Vladimir Putin may well be on the way to restoring Russia to its rightful place as the symbol of sporting evil.



Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen