Sheriff’s burdening taxpayers a concern

Letter to the editor
Published: June 6, 2008

Editor:

I was shocked to see that (Madison County Sheriff) Erik Weaver — of all people — is asking for the county to pay for his $250 an hour lawyers’ fees for something that could have been settled for $250 plus court costs, especially when the school board is blasting the county for not giving it enough money.
Then, not only did he get turned down by the supervisors but had them overruled almost instantly. I will say that my husband and I proudly voted for Erik Weaver and have found him to be a fair and good person — but this is enough to make me raise my eyebrow.

Why not reimburse him for the $250 plus court costs and give the money we are going to have to give him for lawyers’ fees to the schools?

Then, I see this week that the supervisors have decided to raise the fee for the county stickers, which by the way you will now pay for whether you like it or not because it will be included in your taxes, and I quote, “The increases will result in an additional $40,000 income for the supervisors during the coming fiscal year, Dean said at the supervisors May 20 joint budget workshop with the Madison County School Board.”

Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I sure didn’t get a raise last year due to company cutbacks and I don’t know why we would be paying more for this considering that by stopping the use of the stickers the county avoids having to pay for the sticker itself, any administrative costs and also ensures everyone pays regardless. If anything, you would think the fee would be lowered.

And what are we really paying these representatives for anyway?  I got my reassessment in the mail awhile ago and even though I left, count them, 10 messages and called at least 20 times to try to get an appointment to contest this, no one responded and all I ever got was an answering machine. So now we will be paying for a house that is supposedly worth close to $300,000 when you couldn’t sell it for a fraction of that in today’s market.  Who is coming up with these values?

How much can you possibly squeeze from the county when everyone is already paying for inflated gas prices, food prices, and taxes?  Maybe it is time for us all to move because I sure don’t see an end in sight.

April Cowan
Aroda