[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] some real facts on th proposed clock tower

[Joe Futrelle]

Thanks Belden, I think we should keep the focus on public safety, 
because we're talking about a public safety sales tax. That's a 
regressive tax and 1) we shouldn't be using regressive taxes to fund 
public safety in the first place, and 2) if we are using them, they 
should be funding ongoing public safety needs, rather than improvements 
to the courthouse that do not provide any public safety benefit.

In the context of that argument, I agree that it doesn't really make 
sense to talk about diverting those funds to, say, the nursing home. But 
in a larger sense, the board has a responsibility to identify unmet 
public needs and steer revenue towards them. They can always argue that 
the current structure of their budget and revenue sources don't permit 
them to move money around to meet unmet needs, but where that's the case 
then they need to show that they are working to change the budget as 
much as possible to solve that kind of problem.

Belden Fields wrote:
> Dear Folks,
> 
> Because we had been  given some incorrect information on the cost and 
> the stipulations for expenditures for the clock tower, I am sending this 
> info I just got from my representative on the county board, Jenny 
> Putman.  Given what I know now, I am less inclined to ask for diversion 
> of these funds for purposes other than legal ones.  People who were 
> going to speak for more public defenders, free nurse consultations for 
> inmates, etc. can march ahead with that if they wish.  But I can't ask 
> for this money to be diverted to the nursing home.
> Please spread these facts as widely as possible.
> 
> We should also try to find out how the $7.2 million figure got spread 
> around.  If Jenny is right, and I have no reason to believe that she is 
> not since she serves on the facilities committee, that was a huge 
> exaggeration.  I'm not looking for scapegoats,  but we need to find out 
> how this happened so that we don't mobilize people around false info. in 
> the future.  I apologize to all those to whom I cited that figure.
> Belden
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-- 
Joe Futrelle
Person