Commissioners do not need to raise taxes
I have been writing to the County Commissioners with ideas regarding cutting taxes since January 2024.
As a former commissioner, I understand the budget a little better, perhaps, than the average guy. My goal was to be helpful, because struggling citizens and businesses need relief. Our board cut taxes when revenues were declining, knowing that folks spending and staying off of government assistance was good for citizens and the economy.
Amazingly, the proposed budget has $9 million in tax increases and zero tax cuts.
Citizens at the budget hearing offered the following fixes to avoid the proposed tax increases: Freeze hiring, delay capital projects and use funds from the $55 million sitting in various savings accounts. They are all viable options.
I had not studied the usually contentious board of education’s budget. However, I was compelled to write this to the commissioners when made aware of a certain budget request:
“I learned an astonishing piece of information this weekend. … So unbelievable, I thought it worth mentioning because it is inconceivable to me that you each know about this. … Embedded in this year’s board of education budget is a bold request to fund the BluePrint raises this year, 2025, when the state mandate does not require funding these raises until next year, 2026.
“Funding these state-mandated increases this year also has the effect of increasing next year’s total budget not only by the $10 million … but by built-in cost of living adjustments (COLA) and step increase percentages of the employee’s increased wages. COLA and step increases can be 5% or more. … that is significant. Implementing the raises this year is a very poor financial decision, especially if it causes you to believe you need to raise taxes.
“Remove approval for this request and your need to raise taxes this year is erased. … waiting until it is absolutely necessary to pay … is just good common sense. Putting BluePrint 2026 teacher raises in this year’s budget, which is equal to … the tax increases you are proposing, is self-imposed pain.
“… I am hoping this is news to you, and not an expense you agreed to pay. This seems to me to be the simple solution to finding $9 million in spending reductions instead of raising taxes … Thank you.”
Call commissioners before they vote on the proposed increase. Tell them: “Don’t raise my taxes!”
Robin Frazier, Taneytown
Those in political middle need to make their voices heard
I’ve been mulling Chris Roemer’s column of May 12 for several days and have come to the conclusion that, as Shakespeare once put it (or something close), “methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.”
I’m well aware that the editorial staff creates the headline for the editorials and sometimes they don’t really reflect the content, but in this case, it does give a bit of a hint.
To be fair, I must agree that the term “book ban” is a little over the top. What folks are arguing about is more a book restriction. What the conservative wing wants is to restrict access to books that do not fit neatly into what could be called mainstream literature.
These can be books that look at our society from a different point of view or deal with subject matter that makes those of a more conservative bent a bit uneasy. I can understand, and fully support, the decision to not access themselves, or promote the access for their children. That is their decision and they have every right to make that decision.
What those of us of a more liberal bent are not in agreement with is the conservatives not willing to even allow us to decide what we and/or our children have access to. It’s all in the right to choose.
Whether it’s what books are available in public or school libraries, or what medical care a woman, or man, or boy, or girl, for that matter, may receive, if in agreement with their physician(s). Life is full of choices, some good, some bad, some we wish we could do over and others that we simply live with and go on.
It’s the ability to make those choices that make us all human and not simply living robots following the programmed orders from the supreme leader.
Roemer claims it is the more liberal side who initiate the name calling when the don’t agree with the conservative side, but ask yourself where does most of the name calling come from? It all started, and yes, I’m going there, with the former president, whose initials are DJT.
His penchant for name-calling began with his stint as a TV game show host and continues to this day. A very good friend reminded me that she was taught as early as second or third grade that name-calling was not nice and wouldn’t be tolerated. I guess DJT was absent when that lesson was taught.
Unfortunately for us all, those at the far ends of the political spectrum in this country have hijacked the two parties and run both into the ground. It’s time, or well past time, for those who align somewhere near the middle to make their voices heard, at the ballot box and every day between elections.
It’s the only way to save our democracy for future generations. Those at the two opposite ends will destroy it if we allow them to continue in their ways.
Bill Kennedy, Taneytown
Commissioner is trying to punish library over state act
I watched the recording of the May 14 budget hearing alternating between anger and disgust as County Commissioner Ken Kiler continues to denigrate the library and its staff and feels the need to “punish” them. He said he is not a “library expert” (and that is a quote) and yet he feels he can micromanage and make better decisions about Sunday hours and library fines than the professional staff and library board of directors.
But now, because of a public information act report, we find that Kiler has not been truthful with his constituents. The library has responded several times to his email questions from a meeting with Commissioner Ed Rothstein, the library executive director and a member of CCPL Board of Directors, notably in an email dated April 9.
That was more than a month before Kiler’s accusation that the library hadn’t responded to his questions. In fact, that April 9 email was sent to all the commissioners, the county administrator, the budget director and the library board.
To me Kiler is seeking retribution for what he considers the audacity and treachery of the library to support the Freedom to Read Act, recently passed by the state legislature. Again, he was confused by the facts: No library staff ember testified in favor of the bill. But Kiler wants to punish the library.
As Rothstein said at the May 14 hearing, the decisions made during that meeting will have a “severe impact” on one of the finest library systems in the state, possibly in the entire U.S. These decisions do not punish the library; they punish the citizens of this county. Kiler has shown he is no friend of the library despite what his checkbook might say.
Martha Hankins, Hampstead
Taking away library funding is unacceptable
The Carroll County Board of Commissioners has voted to remove the library funding it allocated just last month.
In a last-minute maneuver, Commissioner Ken Kiler advanced a motion to take more than $160,000 from the CCPL budget. He had plenty of empty excuses but eventually acknowledged that he wanted to “send a message” about the Freedom to Read Act. Unfortunately, his motion passed with the help of commissioners Michael Guerin and Joseph Vigliotti.
This is completely unacceptable! Libraries provide so much for a community. Today’s libraries are more than just books. From teaching critical literacy skills to promoting entrepreneurship and small business development to preserving and facilitating our community stories, an easier question might be what don’t libraries do!
If this motion stands, it will not only impact the library system but the community as a whole. There is a real possibility that CCPL will have to reduce staff, cut hours or even face branch closure.
The citizens of Carroll County should not have to suffer because some commissioners disagree with a law passed by the legislature. This last-minute attempt to ruin one of the treasures of Carroll County cannot be allowed to happen.
Patti DiLeonardi, Sykesville
