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For sale ?
WITHOUT BELABORING the point, there’s a final word or two to be said about the question of Rappahannock joining the regional planning districts.
One oF the most compelling arguments made for joining the district was that unless we do, we won’t be eligible for federal grants. Indeed, the state government has made this one of the leading arguments for pressing planning districts all over Virginia: Sign up or lose out on Uncle Sam’s dollars.
Have we really come to the point where everything, even local government, has a price tag? Is everything the length and breadth of the land, nailed down or loose, really for sale? Seems so.
TAKE THE MATTER of “revenue-sharing.” Reporters for the Rappahannock News and the Piedmont Virginian cover quite a lot of local governments — five Boards of Supervisors, and more than that number of municipalities — and we haven’t noticed one yet that really knows what to do with its “share.”
Imagine! Money flowing magically from Washington and nobody knows what to do with it. In some instances, it has even been stated that it’s not needed. %Have we really reached the point where everyone is so numb from paying taxes that they don’t even care how those tax-funds are spent? Just spread it around, and who cares?
WELL, FOR ONE THING, we feel sure that more and more strings will start becoming apparent on all that lovely, “free” money from Uncle Sam. And we wouldn’t be surprised that a. lot of those lovely “regional grants,” which governments have been encouraged to get in line for, have already been used up in “sharing” money.
The next step, as a letter-to-the-editor suggests, will probably be for us to start paying regional taxes on top of town, county, state and federal taxes. □
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