Scott, I know your educational background( and I think you should lobby for the job. You be a fool of ou didn't.

I'm not really qualified. I was a program guy. They need a guy with a strong park background. The departments are going to be consolidated and Caron will inherit the job. They make that sound like a Prop A item, but it's going to happen no matter what happens to Prop A. Why hire another director when you can dump the responsibility in the lap of somebody you already have on payroll?

There was an item in the paper today where Butz gave an assessment of what will happen if Prop A fails. I'm not sure how he meant it to sound, but the article had a "vote for Prop A or else" tone to it, like he was threatening us with pulling playground equipment and not mowing parks. I'm for Prop A and didn't like the tone of it. I'm not sure if that is how Butz wanted to sound or if it was just bad writing. Our City leaders have a bad habit of sounding condescending in the paper, and that doesn't help them win over voters. Butz needs to be out there selling what the City is going to do for us with Prop A money, not trying to scare us with what will happen if it fails.

You all are correct. Government is the only and best answer to everything. I'm voting no only because I think the new tax is too small; our community deserves more.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm sure you won't find the answer in smarmy soundbite form the Sean Hannity show.

Whatever you think of taxes, taxes paid for the infrastructure of our country. The roads and bridges you drive on, the power and water that comes to your house, things that you take for granted were all public works projects paid for by taxes. Parks are part of that. If you study community development, you will find that by WWII parks were not seen as a luxury, they were considered an important part of a community and parks were included in community development plans paid for by taxes. Now if you follow the news, you understand that the infrastructure of our country is crumbling. We have bridges that need to be replaced, roads in disrepair, outdated water and sewer systems in need of overhaul, and seemingly no money to fix any of it. You can say "boo taxes" and that's true, nobody likes taxes. How else are you going to fix things? I have not heard anyone propose how to pay for improvements without it.

I did see a lovely write up about how a sales tax is a regressive tax and unfair to the poor because it will take a higher % of their overall income. That is a point of view that is argued by economists, so I won't pretend to know if it is true or not. Here is the thing: Say the answer is that lovely "privatization" answer I hear all the time. The City has no money to take care care of parks, so they sell the land to developers and let Lion's Club become the Rolla park. Lion's Club is in the affluent south side of town. Ber Juan is sold and is developed into MST student housing. Poor kids growing up in the shoebox edition used to be able to go to Ber Juan and fish, ride bikes, whatever. Now the only park is so far away from them that they never go, so with nothing else to do they just break into MST students cars for fun. Is paying a tax for the parks in the poorer parts of town that they could use really such an unfair thing? It depends on how important you think that park is.

"On the other hand, Chainring, your statement about "this is really all for more police and fire" is completely unfounded. There is nothing to base that statement off of."

The statement does is material and does in fact have basis. All you have to do is watch city council meetings which is where I got the information. And just this morning, the city manager John Butz was on the radio (KTTR) and stated the same thing. When the parks go off the general fund monies will be freed for "public safety" i.e. police and fire, roughly 400 to 450k per year. This will be used to permanently pay for the safety personnel added and paid for temporarily under the federal stimulus funding; as well as to potentially add additional police officers. Those are the facts from our city manager.

Moreover, Odysseus81, When the icebowl gave 500 to charity, my guess is that 500 was used for charity. If 500 was given to Ber Juan for say a few tee pads, my guess is it would not generate 500 in tee pads by the time the city was done with it (overhead and what not.) (this is just an example, I dont know exactly what a volunteer vs a city installed tee pad would cost). Also, as it was indicated by someone above, the city already mowed the area of the Ber Juan disc course before it was there; how did the disc course add to mowing costs, so why would Ber Juan league need to be 50 bucks to cover that? Finally, if the Centre has a deficit every year, then why aren't the membership fees simply adjusted accordingly....seems simple enough.