Dear Editor:
As reported in Wednesday's News Tribune, Jefferson City is going to seek $600,000 from the feds to build sidewalks, digging yet a bigger debt hole for all future generations. This is yet another project that should be funded by local taxes instead of piling more debt on our kids.
Could we have a balanced budget simply by stopping the insanity of these types of projects nationwide? Less than two weeks ago it was $263,000 from HUD, now $600,000 from the Federal Highway Administration. 76,000 people live in Cole County. This works out to $11.36 per person in less than 2 weeks. Extrapolate that to $300 per person per year or $97 billion in debt reduction per year nationwide. All it would take was for us to fund our own local projects.
Someone explain to me why a person in Kansas, or any other state, should pay more in taxes to fund sidewalks in Jefferson City, or pay more in taxes to pay the interest on the additional money being borrowed by the feds to fund these projects.
Thankfully the $400,000 requested from the feds for Adrian's Island was rejected. Of course that probably means that some glad-handing fed will hand out the money to fund some other project not worthy of local funding.