Letters to the editor, Week of June 1, 2017

Don’t get hood winked again

To the editor:

On June the 13 the voters of China will be presented a three issue town ballot and vote to support or reject each issue. Two of the issues involve the expenditure of town funds for a questionable causes. I urge the voters to reject both proposals.

First, the request to expend $25,000 on a former temporary classroom referred to as the Emergency Preparedness Shelter, a classification I am not familiar with and I thought one of the expansions of the town office and purchase of the generator was for emergencies. This including the building of the communications tower located behind the town office. The selectboard with the town manager have squandered money on this substandard building since we received it from the school district. Any further investment in this building would be foolhardy and a waste of taxpayer money.

Second, the town of China should not be in the land acquisition business. When the town purchased the lot at the corner of Alder Park Road and Lakeview Drive, members of the selectboard advocated for the purchase of the parcel, “before a business purchases the lot. ” That same logic that asks that China buy the adjoining lot for $12,000 would be equally non nonsensical.

These two requests are to be funded by the “Surplus/Unrestricted/Unassigned Fund Balance” which infers that these funds are excess and implies that they have diminished value when in fact this fund is the collection of excess taxation.

China maintains a very high balance in the“Surplus/Unrestricted/Unassigned Fund Balance” well beyond recommendations (by a factor of 4) which is often used as free money but represents the practice of the allocation of monies on one hand and the collection of excess taxation to replenish the fund on the other.

I ask the voters to reject these requests and not to get “hood winked” again.

H. David Cotta
China