What’s going on?
Submitted By Don Wright 

First published in the Daily Advocate, reprinted by permission of the author. 

By now I’m sure all of you property owners have your new 2011 tax appraisals. I personally could not believe my good luck. Here we are in a national recession. Property values all over our country plunging but not in Ohio and Darke County. 

I have one farm that was valued at $412,900 in 2010 but now in 2011 it’s valued at $660,560. That’s an increase in value of $247,600 in one year. My other properties increased at a comparable rate. I just sat here on my donkey last year and with no effort at all got rich. 

Why am I not happy and excited about all of my new found wealth? It’s because I’ve lived long enough to recognize a rip off when I see one coming. It’s coming at all of us from every direction. 

The State of Ohio is like a giant voracious vulture setting on a fence post. It will pluck our eyes out while we are still alive with regulations, fees and mandates. After we die it will strip our bones clean with the death tax. 

There was a time Ohio was a great place to seek your fortune. Today only a fool would invest here. We are one of the most taxed states in the union. Investors and their jobs are leaving Ohio like rats from a sinking ship. Our problem is most of us have invested a lifetime here and we have no way out. 

The following is only a small thing but one of a hundred ways the State uses to suck up more of our money. It shows the unrelenting culture of greed in Columbus. Today if you buy land in Ohio and pay taxes on the land but you don’t live in Ohio you can’t shoot a rabbit or catch a fish on this property without an expensive out of state license. Personally not in a lifetime would I obey this law. 

It’s not only the Ohio vulture that wants to pick our pockets clean, we have a pack of coyotes in the Darke County courthouse that wants to crack our bones and suck out our financial marrow to build a $10 million courthouse we have no need for. Stay alert taxpayers. We may have a poison pill ready when they try it. 

Our new Juvenile Judge started out on the right foot. He immediately made a cut in the expenses of his office. What a breath of fresh air. We hope this austerity includes saying no to the proposed new courthouse. 

Jesse Green, a lot of Republicans want to know what your position is on the courthouse. Your opponent has already stated her opposition to it. 

A few days ago I had a private meeting with a group of Greenville business owners. This group consisted of a well known Democrat, two women and several Republicans that are fed up with the direction the Republican party is taking in Darke County. These people know that any public stance they take on any subject will usually find half of their customers disagreeing with them. They could lose a lot of business. They asked me to voice some of their concerns. I understand their problem. 

I’m in a very unique position. I’m 77 years old, I don’t owe anyone a red cent. I don’t want or need anything from anyone. I don’t have any family here I can embarrass. Best of all I really don’t give a damn what anyone on earth thinks or says about me. So I agreed to ask the questions they want to know. I will refer to this group as “they.” 

They want to know what Rodd Hale is doing to earn his salary. They say he has high paid policemen burning up expensive gas driving around the city checking trash bags, junk cars and privacy fences. They feel these are his duties. They want to know how many police cars the city has and how many non-police are driving city vehicles. 

They want to know how many water wells the city has paid to have drilled when the ethanol plant caused their well to go dry. They want to know at what cost. They want to know who the idiot was that agreed to pay for these wells in the first place. 

They want to know why every time there is a simple fender bender wreck a rescue unit and a fire truck shows up. Who is paying these people? If it’s us tax payers they want this worthless exercise stopped. If it’s the insurance companies paying, it will be passed on to us in increased premiums. If it’s a state mandate then the state should have to pay for it. With all the cellphones out here a wreck with injury or vehicles on fire will get quick attention. 

They want to know why the city is spending over $300,000 to build a road across a piece of private property to a pole barn headquarters for Integrity Rescue. They believe the city is making a fool out of every contractor that ever built a street in the city and had to fight for a year to get their bond money back. They don’t believe the city should be able to take taxpayer’s money and give it to any private business. They think this is a transfer of wealth pure and simple. They don’t believe you can buy jobs. There wasn’t a person in the room that ever got one penny of help from the city when they started their business. They don’t want their tax dollars raised to help any business. They believe a business should stand alone on its own merits. It should succeed or fail without any government money. 

The group was split on the new school issue. They did agree that building a Taj Mahal school would not be supported by any of them. One person spoke about a box school that could be built for half the price advertised and give the students the same safety and education as the show place they are proposing. They talked about the three new $40 million schools in the Dayton area that are closed up because there is no money to operate them. 

The most fun for me was the discourse on the public service unions. One person said he was told that in 2010 the city firemen ran over 300 calls and only had a dozen real fires. They want to know how many firemen the city has and what their pensions are. It was unanimous that they think the city is intimidated by the unions and they should man up and get rid of anyone they don’t need. They found it alarming what the union members pay out of their pockets for insurance and what they have to pay. They agreed they don’t want to support the union members retired lifestyle anymore. 

They want the city to answer their questions in this newspaper so the general public will be made aware. The public has a right to this information. 

I’m back. How about the bike path from Greenville to Union City? Is it possible there is no clear deed to the old D.G.U. railroad right-of-way? Is it possible that adjoining property owners own this right-of-way? It should have been a horse trail anyway. 

How can Greenville justify spending thousands of dollars trying to buy jobs and then want to charge the car show and horse parade people $4,000 each year. These activities bring a lot of people who spend money to Greenville. DUH.