Latest from the Cumberland town council,
At the meeting on aug19, 2009 the town council adopted and signed a contract for fire service from Buck Creek fire department. We have been in negotiations since the beginning of the year as the fire department was looking for a 25% increase this year and further increases for the next 2-3 years. The contract as signed has a 5 1/2 % increase for this year and is an agreement for BCFD to provide service for next 2 years (2010,2011) as well with a dollar amount to be determined during further negotiations. I have been involved with these negotiations and will continue to try to get the best service for the town for the most reasonable cost. We have also decided to start looking at putting the service for the whole town out to bid for the 3 local departments vs have our own department vs leaving the service areas as they currently are. Current tax caps will help in my desire to reduce the tax burden on Cumberland citizens but will require some challenges to provide to current level of service that I feel is a necessity.
The council also voted to allow the police department to use money that has been obtained by them from forfeiture and seizures to purchase in car video cameras. This has been shown to increase conviction rates as well as provide electronic data for department use and help with keeping our officers a bit safer.
The “Cumberland arts goes to market” festival on August 8th was a big hit and the current farmers market is open not only on Saturday mornings but also on Tuesday evenings so stop by and get your locally grown products.
The council passed a resolution opposing the sale, zoning change and redevelopment of the ST. John church on the corner of German Church rd and Washington st. Word is that a developer/corporation is looking at buying the church, tearing it down and building a new retail structure. As the council stated, look forward to developing Cumberland into a even better place but would not wish to see an historic building that has been a part of the town for many years to be replaced when we have multiple site available at this time for such building.
The sanitary sewer board has not made any decision yet dealing with the minimum charge of 4 units that the sewer department is current charging and bringing it back down to actual usage like I have pressed for and will continue to do. It would help if citizens would contact the town and the sanitary board to express your feelings on this issue to them and at their meetings (3rd wed of month at 3:30).
Now that we have received federal monies to build the east sewer interceptor I have asked for a sizable amount of the money we had already set aside for the project be used to pay down the debt on the treatment plant. This to has met with little support among the council but I will keep at this issue as well. It as well as adding customers along the east interceptor will be our best chance to get the flat rate portion of our sewer bills reduced to a more reasonable level.
That is about all for this month. If you have any issues do call or email me. That is why you put me on the council.
Joe Siefker
Town councilman dist 5
PS please keep your cars and homes doors locked, we have had a large increase in car break-ins with car doors being left unlocked.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
More lies and More taxes
Washington is now looking at a 2 billion dollar addition the the clunker program so that by my calculations will allow for over 660,000 car deals or lets just say that ever LEGAL U.S. resident (men, women and children) will need to give 10 bucks to someone who just bought a new vehicle, u.s. made or not.
Health care is now the poster child for government gone wrong. The following is a snip from a wall street journal article on what is will cost the tax payers he swore he would not raise taxes on when running for office. Note that he also has taken the plan from insuring the uninsured to attacking the insurance industry.
"The campaign team is intent upon protecting a pledge driven by its 2008 campaign polls: Mr. Obama promised never to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year to avoid being labeled a tax-and-spend liberal.
Even so, Mr. Obama has already broken his no-new-taxes pledge. On Feb. 4, Mr. Obama signed a $33 billion cigarette tax increase, which fell disproportionately on lower- and middle-income individuals. And the “cap and trade” energy bill, approved by the House on June 26, is a tax on anyone who owns a light switch, uses a car key, or has bought anything manufactured, shipped or sold in the U.S.
The House version of Mr. Obama’s health-care—excuse me, “health-insurance”—reform already has four taxes that will largely be paid by people making less than $250,000 a year. There’s $8.2 billion in taxes for using health savings accounts and other tax-free medical savings vehicles to purchase over-the-counter drugs. There’s an 8% tax on employers who don’t offer insurance: The Congressional Budget Office says workers in those businesses would pay the $163 billion cost via lost wages.
There’s a 2.5% “Tax on Individuals Without Acceptable Health Care Coverage” in the House bill that applies to people who either don’t have insurance or whose policies the government deems inadequate. Finally, there’s a $2 billion “Comparative Effectiveness Research Tax” on all private and “public option” insurance policies.
If some version of ObamaCare is passed, the president will break his tax pledge several more times while adding trillions to the deficit, dismantling the best elements of our health-care system and slashing Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars."
Obviously he is never going to be content until the government is in control of every aspect of our lives and takes every dime we make in taxes and will then give us back what they feel we actually need to survive. Sounds like soviet socialism to me.
Again, send me to washington and I will not vote in favor of any of this. Realizing I can not win such a race we at least need to get rid of those in power now.
joe
Health care is now the poster child for government gone wrong. The following is a snip from a wall street journal article on what is will cost the tax payers he swore he would not raise taxes on when running for office. Note that he also has taken the plan from insuring the uninsured to attacking the insurance industry.
"The campaign team is intent upon protecting a pledge driven by its 2008 campaign polls: Mr. Obama promised never to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year to avoid being labeled a tax-and-spend liberal.
Even so, Mr. Obama has already broken his no-new-taxes pledge. On Feb. 4, Mr. Obama signed a $33 billion cigarette tax increase, which fell disproportionately on lower- and middle-income individuals. And the “cap and trade” energy bill, approved by the House on June 26, is a tax on anyone who owns a light switch, uses a car key, or has bought anything manufactured, shipped or sold in the U.S.
The House version of Mr. Obama’s health-care—excuse me, “health-insurance”—reform already has four taxes that will largely be paid by people making less than $250,000 a year. There’s $8.2 billion in taxes for using health savings accounts and other tax-free medical savings vehicles to purchase over-the-counter drugs. There’s an 8% tax on employers who don’t offer insurance: The Congressional Budget Office says workers in those businesses would pay the $163 billion cost via lost wages.
There’s a 2.5% “Tax on Individuals Without Acceptable Health Care Coverage” in the House bill that applies to people who either don’t have insurance or whose policies the government deems inadequate. Finally, there’s a $2 billion “Comparative Effectiveness Research Tax” on all private and “public option” insurance policies.
If some version of ObamaCare is passed, the president will break his tax pledge several more times while adding trillions to the deficit, dismantling the best elements of our health-care system and slashing Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars."
Obviously he is never going to be content until the government is in control of every aspect of our lives and takes every dime we make in taxes and will then give us back what they feel we actually need to survive. Sounds like soviet socialism to me.
Again, send me to washington and I will not vote in favor of any of this. Realizing I can not win such a race we at least need to get rid of those in power now.
joe
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