Latest levy request is insolence

Newark city voters twice in two elections have said no to more property taxes. Just after the most recent vote - an August sucker-punch election that cost taxpayers $40,000 - Keith Richards and company return to their world of make-believe and give the administrative staff a raise. Then they put another levy request on the November ballot and back it with a threat of closing Miller School in the wealthiest part of town.

This clearly demonstrates that power-play politics is all they know. As for the threat to close Miller, I say go for it if that's what it takes to get you in line with your income. What would be so different about moving Miller students than it was when Keith was reported by WCLT (Ask not what your school district can do for you ...) as saying: "We had all of Ben Franklin going to Wilson next year. We need a substantial portion of Ben Franklin to go to Heritage School next year and not to Wilson. That almost by itself balances out the middle schools. The elementary, we had too few a students planning to go to Cherry Valley, too many going to the new Legend school and about the right number going to Miller, but if you take some away from Miller and put them at Cherry Valley, you have to make some adjustments. There is a change between Cherry Valley, Miller and Legend Elementary."

Like we're talking about cattle being assigned to various feedlots, instead of families getting jerked around. So the closing of Miller is somehow a greater loss than the closing of Conrad? Not to me.

Because citizens are so full of this ham-handed treatment, the Advocate news article about the latest levy request lit up the comments column with more angry writers than any other I can remember.

Keith and Company are dancing to their own bongos when they should have been researching the comments columns. Public opinion - at least as I read it - was already boiling before the last vote. To come back at taxpayers with yet another property tax request is nothing short of insolence.

Keith needs to retire again and for real. That would be Step 1 in getting the school district and its patrons together on budgetary problems.

Next is for the schools to get off the property-tax breast. From my last property-tax payment Newark Schools took 67 percent. Compare that to 9 percent for the City of Newark and 8 percent for Licking County.

Property-tax payers are tapped out. Period. So why doesn't someone begin talking about more sales tax or more tax on earned income? Earned income tax, as I said here before (Replace Keith and stop bullying us) does not rely on sacrifice by pensioners. A sales tax would be more equally shared by all of us.

The mantra "give until you bleed - it's for our kids" isn't working. Taxpayers have long ago begun to believe that it's not for the kids, it's for the regime, the invincibles, the bongo dancers who simply will not listen.