Watts asks Council to avoid adding tax burden to working middle class

STAFF REPORT

Friday, June 3, 2011, 1:15 a.m. — Editor’s Note: Nelson County Judge-Executive Dean Watts delivered the following remarks to the Bardstown City Council on Thursday, June 2, 2011, regarding the proposed rate hike of the city’s occupational tax.

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I apologize in advance for the anger in my tone of voice and in the anger in my heart!

This country has just experienced and we continue to experience the biggest recession since the Great Depression;. Small communities like ours are sometimes last to feel the blunt of the blow.

Families are struggling in Nelson County.

Gas prices are now $1.05 a gallon higher than last year, and utility bills are up an average of 17 percent. These struggling families are making house payments, car payments and insurance payments, and some are also making tuition payments to parochial schools. Adding any additional burden on the working middle class is wrong, especially now.

In our government trade magazines, I have read article after article about local governments making cuts; not a single article on anyone raising taxes.

The ironic part about the proposed occupational tax increase is that the majority of the City Council will not pay the tax.

You see, three of the Councilmen are retired, and if the two business owners have a good accountant, they pay very little to none tax to the City, since the first $15,000 is exempt.

It is my estimation that one taxpayer like myself will pay more occupational tax than all six City Council members combined.

The City needs $280,000 to balance the budget, yet is still proposing adding two new policemen costing $130,000. Perhaps annexation was not fiscally responsible.

The more money government gets, the more we spend.

Raise my water bill to meet your needs, raise the other city services to meet their needs, but raising the occupational tax on the backs of the working middle class is wrong!

Just because other communities have a higher tax doesn’t make it right. The Sisters at St. Joseph always told us that if someone robs a bank and gets by with it, it doesn’t mean we can or should do the same.

I respectfully  ask you to consider living with your means, just like the working middle class families do each and every day.

The City will survive and we will prosper together.

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