Maryland Community Newspapers Online
The Nov. 12 letters contained one from Sandra Streeks, asking why high schoolers have to get to school so early ("No rest for weary teens").
As I understand it, the school starting times are staggered so that one set of buses can get all three levels of students to school each day. The obvious answer would be to purchase more buses, but Ms. Streeks would then have to contend with Robert Leffler ("Tax hikes ‘broke our backs'") and Robert Monsheimer ("Taxpayers respond"), each of whom have a letter published directly beneath hers complaining about their taxes being too high.
Mr. Leffler and Mr. Monsheimer both ignore a key factor about our taxes. The taxes are spent. Spent on services in and for the county. They have every right to complain about high taxes, but neither makes any suggestion about which services he would be willing to forgo. Police? Fire? Schools? Libraries?
Councilman Philip Andrews has a commentary on the same page on why there should be no ambulance fee ("Ambulance fee: Do not resuscitate"). But if there is no fee, where does the money come from? Taxes. It is easy to be against taxes, it is much more difficult to cite specific services to cut.
So what I want from The Gazette is simple. After notice, please don't print any more curmudgeonly letters complaining about high taxes, unless the writer specifically states what county services he would cut to offset the need for higher taxes.
Dan Barnett, Gaithersburg
