Councilmen Refuse To Admit Key Fact

Once again, certain members of Springfield's City Council just aren't seeing the forest for the trees. When I read Doug Burlison's letter to the editor in the June 3-16, 2009 issue of the Community Free Press, wherein he lectures the community on its political mandate cocerning tax increases, and the future of the police and firefighter pension fund, I had to laugh, and then I started screaming!

Being relatively new to the community and, admittedly, being to the far left of the political spectrum of Springfield, it is my impression that the voting public has been very supportive of educational levies and bonds. Furthermore, it has embraced certain sales-tax initiatives presented to it by the "governing council" as direct fund-raising vehicles for specific projects.

Bob Stevens is a newcomer to the council and he informs the community (in his Guest Column of the same issue of CFP) that there are "no easy decisions" for council members. With all due respect, Mr. Councilman, you knew that when you ran. This incarnation of the council has some of the most serious fiscal issues that the council has had to face in its history. This is not to render the issues of the past insignificant, in any way, but the here and now are what most people are directly concerned with; whether or not that perspective may be typically indicative of the voting public's lack of foresight.

Doug Burlison is well aware that I am no fan of his. He touts himself as THE citizen who "called for an audit of this city." Well, Mr. Burlison, my contention is, has been, and probably always will be, that the city council that you voluntarily became a part of has always made it a regular practice of granting tax easements to the big-wig developers as an incentive to "keep it local". Where else was JQH going to put his namesake ballpark, Mr. Burlison? Was BKD really going to take their headquarters elsewhere?

Let me spell it out for all of you who think that this tax easement argument is old or doesn't accomplish anything. A 30-year tax easement means that a company developing a commercial or industrial property in this city pays only 33% of the taxes that it would normally pay on such a property over a 30-year period. Nobody who is against tax easements is proposing new taxes. We are asking that the approved tax code for the various sectors of development are reasonably adhered to, rather than to be set aside by a conveniently declared "emergency bill" such as the one that permitted BKD to immediately commence construction of its new headquarters, and granted it a tax easement.

I want every public employee to have an adequate pension. Springfield is not to blame for the knee-jerk legislative reaction that the entire country had to 9/11. To be sure, pension funds of police and firefighters were insufficient, but a legislative mandate that placed an untenable burden on communities of all sizes was clearly not the answer. It should have been the response of every self-respecting city council member across the country to actively oppose such reactionary and emotionally manipulative legislation.

What communities across America did, rather than mount rightful protest, was acquiesce to an unfair piece of legislation that demanded a disproportionate fraction of nearly all communities' operational budgets to be apportioned to the pension funds of police and fire fighters. The imminent failure of the public education system has been staring this country's communities, particularly smaller communities like Springfield, in the face for decades, but no similar legislative response has been forthcoming from national, state or local legislators.

Respectively, Mr. Burlison and Mr. Stevens, it does not suffice for you, our elected representatives to the Springfield City Council, to lecture us on how difficult these decisions are. The plain truth is that you, or people like you, had the opportunity to provide this community with millions of legitimate tax revenue dollars from commercial and industrial property development. Instead, city council played the patsy.

Neither Mr. Burlison or Mr. Stevens have made any substantial suggestions to remedy the fiscal problems facing the city. Mr. Burlison, at one time, proposed a fire sale of community infrastructure and equipment. What was it in your letter that you said about a "band-aid" being insufficient, Mr. Burlison? Your suggestion for a city parking garage sale would have even been akin to putting a swatch of toilet paper on a fatal slash to the jugular!

No friends, these council members are simply making excuses and seeking absolution in advance for having to make the unpopular decisions that have been placed upon them by their predecessors who chose to take road most taken in this country: the road to corporate greed and manipulation of legitimate taxation processes that are in place to provide the public sector with the appropriate revenue it needs to perform its function in a free society.

Hopefully, this will teach more Springfield voters to turn out for an April election. I personally believe that local elections should be held at the same time state and federal elections are held, in order to ensure a higher level of voter participation.