Folks, have you noticed the little slip of pager inserted in your brand-new tax bill for 2020?? If you sign up to pay your full tax bill on a 5-month equal monthly installment plan? You can “Prevent your taxes from becoming delinquent!” the slip of paper says.
But if you think that the Cleveland County Commissioners are finally looking out for us citizens and tax payers, think again!!! You can keep your count6y taxes from going delinquent by putting your five payments under your mattress until the January 5, 2021 due date and then pay the bill in full. Saving five trips to the tax collector’s office or writing and mailing five checks at a cost of five fifty-five cent stamps. The commissioners are not doing you a favor at all.
The only reason for this gimmick of a plan is that the Cleveland County Commissioners will have four tax payments from you months before they are due. They need your money now and are willing to lie to you about it to get it. All in an election year. A sure sign that Cleveland County has a cash flow problem and they don’t care about YOUR cash flow problem for most of you that have been laid off during the Coronavirus Pandemic and unemployment payments are or have run out.
But that is not all.
During all this razzle-dazzle scam by the Commissioners on your pocketbook, the Commissioners at the August 4, 2020 Commissioners will be voting to throw almost a Million dollars into an expansion at the Foothills Shooting Range. Knowing that this range has yet to take in more money than the county puts out for salaries and upkeep. They want to have a $4.5 Million shooting range instead of a $3.5 Million shooting range. I like to shoot too, but when the costs topped a million bucks, I went from ‘for” to “against!”
When the Commissioners read this article, and they will because I sent it to them, they will tell you that this expansion is not for a million bucks. They will say it only costs $836,000 and the NC Wildlife people are paying $487,500 of that. What they will leave out is that the County has to pay for the administration, maintenance and management of the range and a 33% increase in the range will add that much more to the overhead.
And what they will totally refuse to tell you is that if the County reneges of the Foothills Shooting Range deal with the NC Wildlife folks, the Shooting Range reverts to the NC Wildlife Commission and that the County has agreed to reimburse the Wildlife Commission for every dime that they have put up-prorated. I think the deal is for 30 years and there are many years yet to go.
Folks, show up for the Commissioner’s Meeting Tuesday night at 6:00 PM at the LeGrand Center. Tell the Commissioners that enough is enough. Stop gouging the taxpayers at every turn. Do NOT raise taxes by re-evaluating property or by raising sales taxes. And leave the Confederate Monument on the old Court Square right where it has been for over 100 years. Cut waste and quit throwing away tax dollars away on the mismanagement at the Fair, the ALWS, the Shooting Range and anything else that can’t pay for itself.
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Tell them that Robert A. Williams said so! Maybe I will tell them myself!!
