First off, SPLOST stands for Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. It’s an additional tax that’s added to the sales tax that voters vote on. The proposed tax always comes with a project list that it would support. E-SPLOST is an educational SPLOST, and T-SPLOST is a transportation SPLOST.
I’m against both of the taxes that are coming up for vote/renewal for different reasons.
I’m against the E-SPLOST because of the way our county operates it’s budget and has managed the previous E-SPLOST. I’m sure many will vote ‘yes’ on this for the sole reason that it has to do with funding going to education. But before one votes to give them another check to spend as they see fit, they need to look at the prior projects that E-SPLOST has provided. It’s almost a running joke around everyone in the entire county how they just can’t seem to ever have enough schools built. I don’t even know the number of schools we have now, because every time you turn around, another $20-30M school is being built. We’re to the point that we’re neglecting the older schools to give way for a future project-that project being to tear down and replace the neglected school rather than go the cheaper route and maintain the school. I went to the school that I’m talking about, and even though it’s been over 10 years ago, there is no way that it would be to the point that it is unsafe for the children if they had not ignored maintenance for so long. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that one of the contractors for all of these new schools has some ties to those that propose these sort of taxes on the voters.
It’s pretty obvious by looking at the road closure map, that we never get enough ice or snow to really make preparing for any really worth it. The way it usually works is if they call for anything, we get nothing. It’s really not that much different for what we got yesterday evening. We only got enough snow to dust the ground to where things are mostly white, but not really enough for it to be enjoyable—just a mess. But since the temperatures have been below freezing for the past few days, it was just right for the snow to melt on the roads and then refreeze to make them icy. It’s not really at all what we were expecting, we were expecting a few inches of snow, but it was still enough for work to be canceled today.
Today my brother and I attended the media event for the launch of the walking tour for the West Hill Cemetery in Dalton. We attended because we both played a part in creating the map as a project at our work that is used in the brochure, and was recognized, along with our work place, for doing so. The guy that did the brochure tweaked the map a little after I submitted it and made it flow with the rest of the brochure. The meeting was inside the chapel and had quite a few guests that were relatives to some of the stops along the tour. I had never been in this cemetery prior to working on this map, but it has a lot of notable figures, along with their achievements and stories, buried there that played a part in making Dalton what it is today.
The brochure is wonderfully designed and full of history for each of the stops along the tour. It’s supposed to be available in a lot of places around town that deal with the community, and will probably also be in the Georgia Welcome Center at the state line on I-75.
It’s hard not to be concerned with seeing the unemployment rate rise month after month. Just today the numbers were released bringing the national percentage up to 9.5%, a 26 year high. You hear all of these predictions like, “expecting to only see another 1 million jobs lost for the rest of the year” and you really can’t put any faith at all in the economists’ predictions. They naturally change their predictions often, and when the single month of June alone was -467k, it’s hard to imagine only another 1 million jobs will be lost over the next 6 months.
Georgia is sitting at a 9.7% unemployment rate as of May 2009, and my county, Whitfield County, had a rate of 12.4% for May. Not as bad as some of course, but that’s nothing at all to be happy or proud of. My county’s major industry was carpet, so when the housing bubble popped, so did things here. I won’t even bring up budget deficits.
At the last county election, a local tax called ‘SPLOST’ was voted on and approved. It is basically another 1% tax that is tacked onto the sales tax, which is supposed to be for improvements on our local road system. Since then, I have seen nothing at all be improved. A couple of years ago, our county did a county-wide waterline project. During this, they had to saw up strips across the road to get the waterline across, and when they were done w/ that they poured these strips w/ concrete. Well since then, all of these have sank down. I would have assumed that the many thousands and thousands of dollars that this new tax was going to be bringing in would have been used to repave some of these roads. Wrong! Continue Reading..
Two people in a stolen Ford Mustang led police on a high speed chase through the streets of Dalton Tuesday before they were stopped more than 40 miles away, near Cleveland, Tenn., officials said. Jimmy Raines, 19, and a juvenile female, both of Union County, Tenn., were arrested by the Tennessee Highway Patrol around mile marker 19 on I-75 in Tennessee, Tennessee Department of Safety spokesman Mike Browning said.
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When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.
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© Copyright 2007-2012 Shane Holden
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