The Patrick County Board of Supervisors would have us believe that a taxpayer supported EMS service is their highest priority, except when it is not.
If you were the board and had “saved” $1,800,000 on the refinancing of the school bonds would you have spent that money on your “highest” priority or….paved roads? If you answered paved roads to the tune of $500,000 you would be correct!
That $1.8M would have paid for almost seven years of the LifeCare proposal or five years of the county run EMS “plan” the board has had in hand for four years!
In my opinion the board is holding the taxpayer supported EMS service (and the taxpayers) hostage to their priority of passing a meals tax. Some on the board members have asked the rhetorical question “what is the price of a human life? Is the rhetorical answer “a meals tax”?
If the board really wanted to implement a taxpayer supported EMS service they could have already funded it out of the school bond refinance savings. However, what the board really wants is to have a meals tax which they can raise year after year. Even after paving five miles of roads there remains $1,300,000 in savings from the school bond refinancing. That $1.3M would pay for five years of the LifeCare EMS service without any meals tax. Have you heard any mention of that or are you hearing “we need the meals tax to pay for the EMS service?”
The board wants us to believe that without the meals tax a taxpayer supported EMS service is not feasible. That simply is untrue. The board really wants another source of taxes which they can control and raise year after year. The board’s position of the necessity of the meals tax to fund the EMS service is merely leverage to achieve their goal of raising taxes on all of us again.
Do not fall for the deception. Ask the board of supervisors to use the school bond refinancing savings to pay for the EMS service! IF they can use it to pave roads why can they not use it to provide us with adequate EMS service? After all they have been talking about this for nine years. Don’t you think it is time they do more than talk?
Bill Moore
Woolwine
