Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 16 will be the last BOCS meeting of 2008. Money will be the big agenda topic as the country frantically tries to find ways to fill the public coffers.
Ideas that were met with supervisors turning up their respective noses several months ago are now being eyed with less repulsion. Dana Fenton, director of legislative affairs, will bring up 2 previously rejected ideas. First to be considered will be a tax on admissions, meals and cigarettes. Second to be considered will be a bifurcated tax structure, where residential and commercial taxes will differ.
These ideas seem bearable if some sort of sunset clause is incorporated. Government always seems to hate to remove a tax, so auto-expire would make much more sense.
For more specific information, see the full article in the News and Messenger.
Won’t the second option require action by the state legislature?
Letiecq’s a smoker. I say tax the hell out of the cigarettes.
How about a tax on racism? The county’s coffers would be full to overflowing.
Yes, Alanna, the division of the residential and commercial tax rates requires action by the General Assembly. I read in the Post that one delegate – I can’t remember his name – stated that he was going to submit a bill requesting that option for Prince William County.
Meal tax proposals have failed at least twice in Prince William.
I don’t understand why a meal tax fails. Other local jurisdictions have one and the piddly amount has never stopped me from eating in Manassas. It’s one way of spreading the tax to non-residents as well. I would think the restaurant traffic at Potomac Mills could help ease our burden.
I just has a great idea on how to save money. The BOCS could offer free firearm proficiency/safety classes as well as discounts on glocks.
Then they could disband the Prince William County police department!
That would save a whole lotta money and it would solve the whole resolution problem to boot so that the immigrants would start coming back.
After all, the PWCPD was only established in 1970.
Of course we must keep the Sheriff’s department. They perform essential services. They are a constitutional office established in 1731.
What do y’all think?
Mackie
I would leave this county ASAP if the PWSO became the “law”. There SO is a joke in this county. We have a some good deputies, but the top Deputy Dawgs belong in the pound.
Haha. Every cloud has a silver lining…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJVk8gUrYKA
Censored, a meal tax was on as a ballot ref twice and it failed by large margins. I agree with you, that tax would at least be shared by those visiting the County as well as residences. But it just can’t seem to pass here.
The local restaurant industry fought it last go round.
I doubt if it would even be noticed by most people. One establishment in the city recently opened a ‘satellite’ restaurant out in the county. Same menu etc. Is the county restaurant cheaper because of no meals tax? No. They raised the menu cost.
I am all for a meals tax, if a designated part is earmarked for our schools.
I know a group of senior ladies that went to the “satelilite” shortly after opening, and the management made no bones about why the price on the menu was higher in PWC. They will not be returning to EITHER establishment after that. Not to mention they tell each and every person they know.
New to this but isn’t there a way for me to view the BOCS meeting at home? I believe it is streamed live, correct? If anyone could provide insight on this and/or the link, I would be much appreciative!
Thanks so much!
PwWsitze, sorry, if you are a comcast customer,, channel 23. If not, you can see a live stream from board of supervisors website.
The BOCS needs to focus on the following as a solution to the “poverty” in our county, the “illegal” immigrant population in our county, the housing crisis in our county, and the “job” crisis in our county.
The message is so important I am repeating it:
Individuals…never even entered a recent debate (houston chronicle) concept in HOURS of debate.
The reality of the distribution of “people” in our county is that there are stupid and ignorant people, and there are smart and intelligent people. The key distinguishing feature for which they are judged by society (and the greater usefullness to ALL others in the society) is “the individual’s DNA, the individual’s parent’s DNA, and the “environment the individual was exposed to”.
There is a difference between intellect or ability and KNOWLEDGE. Knowledge can be taught, intellect cannot.
NONE of this “intellect need”, and the problems “illegal” immigration has caused in our county has anything to do with race, gender, religion or ethnic groups, ONLY individuals. Again, thanks NGL for the insertion that POVERTY has a role to play in crime rates and whether a neighborhood (like PWC) is DANGEROUS or SAFE.
Having finally seen the answer correcly brought to light by Red Dawn first (then NGL), then the real issue about “illegal” immigration, is the “illegal” part, and the fact that “illegals” harm MILLIONS of innocent people in communities and the rest of the nation. therefore they must be stopped by enforcing the LAW, and NOT by having RACE debates and showing their own racial bigotry, and hatred for “White” people like mackie does, or “ignorant immigrants” as CT does (even though I understand mackies anger at PAST injustice, his anger is not justified in MODERN LAW when put in terms of the RACIAL HATRED that he himself expresses. Like ShellyB said, GET OVER IT and start learning to treat ALL “individuals” with the respect they deserve, regardless of their gender, race, religion or ethnicity, based on WHAT THEY DO TO OTHERS, and WHAT THEY DO FOR OTHERS, AND HOW GOOD or BAD THEY ARE, relative to being LAWFUL or LAWLESS, HELPFUL or HURTFUL.
It is a fact that poverty, lawlessness, lack of ethics, and crime are related, and a FACT that most “illegal” immigrants are POOR. When you increase the population of POOR in your country, you increase your crime, lack of ethics, lawlessness and future POVERTY, just like citizens have seen in the Past 25 years of “illegal” immigration and lack of law enforcement, the decline of society and financial security, by the negative effects of a massive infusion of “illegal” immigrants into their communities.
The solution is to stop “illegal” immigration, by LAW ENFORCEMENT and DEPORTATION and to be more selective in bringing “rich, educated and intellectual” people (From rich, educated and intellectually growing nations into your country as “legal” immigrants, while at the same time trying to improve the conditions of poverty in other nations so that those “individuals” who are smart, but not “educated”, can be educated and improve the wealth, propserity, and “ethics” of their own countries, and prevent dragging ours down with MORE POOR, MORE CRIME, MORE POPULATION growth than we can handle.
DECREASE the POPULATION of POOR in our community, especially “illegal” poor, for the problems they cause everyone else trying to REMAIN ABOVE POVERTY and raise a family.
The issue is “legal” behavior and “illegal” behavior and has NOTHING to do with race, gender, religion, or ethnicity, but everything to do with “crime, lawlessness, and financial ruin.
You cannot raise TAXES for GROWTH and financial prosperity by bringing more POOR PEOPLE into the county, and allowing more POOR “illegal” immigrants to remain in the county.
You can and should enforce laws to remove “illegal” immigrants and support laws and social programs that help the “legally poor” and remove “POVERTY” in PWC, if you want a better lawful, richer, ethical society.
Michael, how do you propose getting poor people out of the county?
Why do you think they came here in the first place?
If I may ask, do you live in PWC and if yes, eastern or western?
If poor people are “legal”, then we take care of them, we do not remove them from the county, we educate them as much as possible, and keep their wages as high as possible, and encourage them to take personal accountability to improve themselves and thier communities, and to get out of poverty by improving their education, their homes, their landscapes and their commitment to lawfulness. We encourage “legal” immigration of the best and brightest other nations have to offer to our county, to increase the wages they earn, and the wealth they create, allowing them to take care of more of the “legal” poor. If however they are “illegal” poor, or “illegal” rich then we enforce “legal” immigration law, and deport them back to the countries they came from with a suggestion to apply legally for legal entry to the US, and until they are invited and can contribute more than poverty to our society, work within the political and educational structure of their own countries to improve law, schools, wages and education so they will not so desperately need to break our laws for their own personal gain, hurt millions of our innocent people, and by doing so will achieve financial and political for their countries, their children left behind, thier family left behind and their culture (by not having to take care of them).
Yes, I live in PWC and in my subdivision I have both legal and likely “illegal” neighbors. Since I can’t tell the difference except by inference from their “behaviors” rather than their gender, race, religion or ethnicity, I want law enforcement to do its job and deport those they find who are illegal, before my neighborhood becomes even more impoverished and I have to take even more drastic action than “free speech” to protect myself and my family from financial collapse, crime and social decay that the “illegal” population is visibly bringing over the past 10 years to my community. Like SA said, I don’t feel safe in my community because I see the poverty and crime rise at the same rate as the number of “illegals” who have entered my community over the past 10 years.
Chief Dean’s crime statistics don’t reflect the crime we see in our streets, the gangs we see that have moved in, the behavior that affects our property values, our security and our social welfare. People in our neighborhoods know what is happening and they also know why. If you don’t live in a poverty decaying neighborhood like PWC and see the change in behavior and crime, you have no right to judge anyone who wants the “law” enforced. Residents who are asking for the law to do its job, are “innocents” affected financially, “culturally”, ethically and “securely” by “illegal” immigration crime.
I can live with the cultural changes as long as they are not politically corrupt cultural changes, but I’ve seen a vast increase in “cultural differences” that ignore law, equality, job discrimmination, and have seen a huge increase in selective cultural preference for employment, mortgages, home purchases, elevated charges to non-ethnic patrons, black market dealing, cultural arrogance, political ethnic “cronyism” and “kabals”, gang encouragement, Anti-Americanism, Anti-White racism, and widespread in-difference for existing community cultural values and laws.
If my only tool to fight this is free speech and law enforcement, I will not be denied that civil liberty, though sympathizers of “illegal” immigrants work digilantly and passionately far outside of my community to deny me these basic “civil rights” and my civil right to enforce law, to protect my general welfare (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness denied by those “illegals” who harm me) and to stop the poverty and ethics deterioration all around me that I see.