To the Readers' Forum:
It would be helpful if The Post-Journal informed the taxpayers of Chatutauqua County about the consequence of selling the county home as a way to balance the budget of 2013. Mr. Ahlstrom, county legislator from Dunkirk, explained it very well on the radio.
If you get a bill that says your telephone will cost $50 more a year, what can you do? You could work more, or you could sell grandma's bed.
You don't want to work more, so you sell grandma's bed for $50 and you think you have solved your problem. But next year, 2014, you get another telephone bill that increases another $50. This time when you pay that bill, not only do you have that $50 for 2014 to pay for, but you also have the $50 increase from 2013 to pay for.
Suddenly the increase has doubled. Now you will have to work even more to pay for it. It would have been so much easier to have worked a little more the first time you got the $50 increase instead of selling grandma's bed.
That is what it would be like to balance the 2013 budget by selling the County Home. It only means that in 2014 we will have two increases in our costs to deal with instead of one increase.
The issue of the County Home must be separate from preparing a new budget. To vote against selling the County Home is to be fiducially responsible, and it is to be respectful of the taxpayer (not to mention grandma).
Timothy Hoyer
County Legislator
Jamestown