letters to the editor
Markli rebuttal to Oct. 12 presstalk
I was amused at last week’s anonymous Presstalk caller’s attempt at promoting big government. In his attempt he unwittingly reinforced the premise of our enlightened founders that government is a poor bargain and the less the better.
Using his numbers of $650 for water, $2,000 for electricity and $1,000 for gas annually for a Farragut household equals a total of $3,650 per year per household, times 8,600 households and you have a total expenditure of $31,390,000 for utilities that we can say the homeowners of Farragut pay annually. Where our anonymous mathematician’s case breaks down is in the fact that where that Ohio town’s residents paid annual taxes for their town to run these utilities, etc., they on top of that paid more than that back to their government in utility bills.
So, if the anonymous writer’s math is correct, Farragut hou-seholds pay outside entities for police, fire and garbage services independent of our Town budget $15,610,000. Add that amount to our own Town tax burden of $7,000,000 and add in our utilities burden of $31,390,000 and we have a total burden for all those costs of $54,000,000.
For the same services, the Ohio town is paying $54,000,000 in taxes PLUS their own utilities on top of this [yes, Virginia, those nice public utilities do charge for their services and I have the paid utility receipts to prove it] so that for what we pay $54,000,000 they get to pay $85,390,000 or more. For our mathematically challenged caller, that means they get to pay $31,390,000 more than we do.
On top of that their state and county property taxes are higher; and plus, they get to pay state and county income taxes as well.
Robert “Bob” Marki
Alderman Ward 1
Town of Farragut
