To The Editor:
When I'm not in Warren, I'm usually in Savannah, Georgia, where I get The Valley Reporter a week or so late. But I love it and read every tender morsel. Hey, it's often more entertaining than a Laurel & Hardy movie. Two items caught my attention in my latest issue.
1. After umpteen meetings and studies over many months, the only solution the Mad River Valley Planning District could come up with to improve things in The Valley is a local option tax? Raise taxes, yeah. Why are our young people leaving the state? They simply can't afford to live here. Why are there so many fewer restaurants now than there were years ago? People can't afford to eat out. It isn't unusual for my wife and I to run up a $100 tab for drinks and dinner at a local restaurant. And if we do, I've got to pay $10 more for taxes which the MRVPD wants to raise to $11. Any time my friends and I need to buy anything "important" we head to New Hampshire and save a lot of money, taking business away from The Valley. That will only get worse. And to paraphrase Henny Youngman, Take my property taxes, please. Enough is enough!
2. Helping the United Church of Christ Church building restoration. Why not? A church is not a building. A church is people, a congregation. Various sects have used places like the Round Barn and Allyn's Lodge for their services. Are those buildings churches? The WUCC building is clearly the symbol of The Valley and has been used for years (free of charge) by Sugarbush, Waitsfield Telecom and others in their ads and publications. And the building is used as much for community events as it is for church services. If we didn't have the church building, what symbol of the Mad River Valley would we have? The new town hall? Mehuron's? C'mon! The $1,500 requested appropriation is in no way coercing the citizens of Waitsfield to support a religion. And, as an aside, the $1,500 pales in comparison to the proposed local option tax that could run as much as $1 million.
Soooo, keep those Valley Reporters coming. When they do, they make my day.
Ronald Geren
Warren and Savannah, GA
