County should be out of ‘energy’ business

localresident,

And I don't disagree, but my point was that that, if we use Dunkirk as an example, the vast majority of the students recieve free, or reduced price, breakfast & lunch so I think it would be safe to assume that the parents of those kids would be exempt from the school tax. If that number is 75% should the remaining 25% have to pay 4 times as much for their kid because they aren't exempt?

As for it being an income tax, again, who collects it and where would it go? Would Cott be required to collect and distribute taxes to every school district it's employees live in?

And if property taxes are unfair because some property owners don't have kids in school then what about workers who don't have kids in school?

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"Excuse me, Darkstar, are you aware of the DEC rules concerning air pollution? "

****, didn't think of that. Good catch! lol!

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The unfairness of school taxes is that it's based on property taxes and not income taxes. Income taxes are progressive, and allow for the elderly with lowered incomes to pay less. It would be a much more fair system.

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"If we as a community could harness the power of Steiner's hot air we could all become rich!" Excuse me, Darkstar, are you aware of the DEC rules concerning air pollution?

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Darkstar, I will say as a property owner without kids, I'm not getting one red cent for my money. $4,000 in property / school taxes each year, and their kids are that much my responsibility? No.

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"Schools should be funded by parents of students who attend or by a payroll tax."

While I don't disagree with parents paying for their children's schooling, in principle, the large welfare population in the are would mean that we still would be paying for a large percentage of the students in many districts.

As for payroll tax, how would that be any better then the current method? Also how would that work if you lived in Chautauqua County but worked in Erie County, or for that matter lived in Dunkirk but worked in Fredonia, which district would get your payroll taxes?

Seems to me that trying to do it via a payroll tax would create massive overhead costs for businesses and a huge bureaucracy in each district to track it all.

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Schools should be funded by parents of students who attend or by a payroll tax.

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Finally, as for energy production, if we as a community could harness the power of Steiner's hot air we could all become rich!

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Now one area that calls for a blended approach is in schools. Personally I'm a fan of vouchers, if a parent wants to send their kid to a private school the tax dollars that would go to the public school for that student should go to the private school, or at least a significant portion of it. This would not only give parents a choice in their children's education but it would force public schools to start stepping up and being accountable not only for their performance but also for their spending.

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Should we privatize everything? Certainly not, the government has a role to play and you can't really compare the County Home to police, sewers, water (drinking and sewage) since there aren't any private companies doing those in the area where there are at least a dozen other nursing homes in the area. Sure the County Home is the only one certified to the level of care that it is, but that's simply because the area only needs one and in general there isn't enough need in the area for a company to move in and open a second one.

Trash pickup comes to mind, for those few areas where it's still provided by the local government.

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hey the libs are at it again. privatizing expensive ? Hey chucky, have you seen the cost of our public schools?The public pensions are bankrupting cities all over the nation. Cheap chuck ? guess not eh ? GM landfill free ? Hardly if their employees use the restroom. It is either going to landfills , the sludge, or being burned. The energy companies flare off enough gas to heat several large cities. The landfill gas thing is a feel good project to help those cope with saving the planet. You know those modern mayans, the doomocrats. Reduce packaging ? why ? It is convenient and sanitary. Plants make ethylene and styrene. Man makes polyethylene and polystyrene. You know them as plastic bottles and the little jelly packs in a restaurant. Rod, maybe you could ban the plant world.

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Comical.

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I disagree that all services should be privatized. I think there is a role for government in some operations, such as water, police, schools, etc. And yes the landfill.

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You think things are costly now? I can't imagine how much more expensive it would be if we privitized every function of government, like road maintenance, water, sewer, police, fire, etc.

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