Voice of the People

The lunacy surrounding the lease of the Toll Road continues, and I just wonder if politicians ever listen to themselves speak. According to the Vidette-Times this morning, Porter County Treasurer, James Murphy, is so “humbled” and impressed with the amount of interest earned on the County’s portion of the Toll Road lease money, since receiving it in Sept., that the County wants to take out a loan to repair unspecified roads in the County. Of course, the article does not state how much it would actually cost to take this loan out, or how much interest there would be on this loan, so the idiot voters could actually determine for themselves how much this grand plan would cost us.

Instead, the County is holding a meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday for the public, with the County to make a final decision on the loan plan at 6 p.m. at the regular meeting. If the true plan, as stated in the newspaper, is to only spend the interest on the Toll Road money in order to “enhance” the County’s road fund, then I suggest the County skip the plan to borrow the 1.5 million dollars and adopt a pay as you go plan. It will cost less of the taxpayers' money in the long run and will actually fulfill the stated goals.

Further, I have a news flash for County politicians: there are many voters who can’t make meetings at 5:30 p.m. because they are still driving home from work, haven’t even left work, need to get home to dinner and family at 5:30 p.m., or are just too exhausted from working all day to spend $3.54 a gallon to drive to Valparaiso for a meeting with politicians who already have their minds made up and are ready to vote on the loan plan. Further, it is my recollection that one of the reasons we had to sell/lease the Toll Road in the first place was because we had to take out loans to repair the road and it allegedly had become just too costly for the State. Of course, we have never heard that it was ever too costly to repair the almost pristine roads around Indianapolis, like I-465.

And here is a second news flash for County politicians: learn to live within your budgets and learn to start respecting the voter. That same advice goes for school systems too, such as Duneland, who might be developing big ideas now that the Legislature has exempted them from the property tax cap.

Anne Gavagan

Posed 6/5/2007