People have spoken out hard on the penny proposal, yet it seems it is once again rearing its head. This discussion deserves its own thread I think as it is the biggest issue on the table right now and should have its own thread. I've made very broad statments about this before... so I'll try to at the very least summarize and reiterate my opinion here... I apologize in advance for being repetitive, but at the same time, I think everyone agrees this deserves its own thread.

I agree, we are taxed too much... Joe Gartler says he would cut the tax, and that if ONLY sensible cuts were made, etc. I stated to Joe.. that wasn't an option. "Sensible cuts" were not an option when these decisions were made.... it was already too late. SO your options, revisiting the beginning of the year, are cut everything as it was listed, or the penny. You yourself just said that you would cut SPECIFIC things. That was not an option.

SO my question is still the same. What is thesolution? Everyone right now is afforded hindsight... something the legislators voting at the beginning of the year didn't get. As far as pork and patronage cutting.... isn't the pork gone from the legislature? What are you going to cut? As far as waste... didn't Kennedy attack the cell phones and the cars, etc. right off the bat?

I agree wholeheartedly that a tax increase is not reform... but my question is what do you do in the meantime while reform is in process? How do you keep functioning? At what cost is the penny saved? As a good teacher in highschool said many times "You can pay me now... or you can pay me later." We skipped the penny. We now have estimates of a deficit as high as 115mil+. How much revenue has the county lost to Niagara county on DMV's? What is it going to cost to repair things next year that went to pot this year because of neglect?

Voting yes to the tax IS a bandaid... but our county is heavily wounded... the county needs reform desperately, and hopefully we will see it soon. But what do we do about today?

And yes, there are struggling people all over the place that would suffer for the penny. But think about how much they will suffer if we ignore the fact that EC is NOT paying it's debts right now, that the county is in a massive deficit, that we are going to be paying late fees on bills... that we are paying out to workers that cashed in on their unemployment, etc... A bit of forsight is necessary... and the county needs to look beyond today and at next year, and 5 years, and 10 years...

So how do you deal with that? How do you justify to the taxpayers that a golf course that was shut down to save 80K will cost 500K to repair next year? How to you tell me that DRIVING the revenue generating businesses of the county is helping us?

Hey, I live in the county and I would cringe at the thought of paying an extra penny. I HATE the idea. But I am also the type of guy that doesn't think that carrying debt is a good idea nor feel that postponing bills, paying late fees, etc is acceptable. That's now how I work it, and that is not how I think the county should run either. A penny? God... that would really hit me hard in the pocket next year... and I would cringe each and every time I saw something I purchased ring up with a 9+% tax added on... but I cringe a lot harder at the thought of what it would cost me if we don't step up to the plate, start paying our county bills, fix this 100mil budget gap, and steady the sinking ship.

The penny IS a bandaid... I will not argue with anyone on that point. But the other side of not bandaging a wound is ignoring it and hoping it will go away. This budget deficit is not going away any time soon. These bills the county is slacking on need to be paid. Do we need reform? Absolutely. Can we shave money from the budget right now? Sure. Is there still patronage to be cut? Indeed there is. But this takes time. We need a fix RIGHT Now.

Just my humble opinion. DO I want a penny? No. Do I think the tax is necessary? Yes... at this point, unless some sort of absurd reform occurs immediately.

On the same note, do I think the penny could be "temporary" as they propose it? I would have to assume that there is a way to write an expiration into the wording of the passage of lthe law... There are always ways to get around things, and as everyone says, once lawmakers tend to get a tax... they don't relinquish it very often...
Anyway, that's my 1cents... I gave Erie County my other one.