Taxes and ice cream

It is the time of year when our local leaders are preparing their budgets for the next fiscal year. Budgets also require local taxes for we, the governed, to pay. They haven’t asked but this old past county commissioner and city council member would like to offer my two cents. Yes, I know good advice is worth it, especially about what one has to pay for it.

Actually the process is pretty simple. The elected boards have to figure out what next year’s income will be and then they need to build their budget to not exceed that amount in spending. Out go should be no more than income.

The way it works. The Commissioners put out a request for budgets from the different entities of the county: treasurer, clerk, assessor, sheriff, etc, and they themselves do the roads.

Normally the different entities request all they can get so the commissioners put their heads together and cut by percentage or whatever it takes to balance. Remember they are cutting budgets for people they see every day and have to listen to valid complaints. Also, remember the county budget comes from a levy, a percentage of the real estate valuations prepared by the assessor. Eventually the budget is cast in stone and everything balances with no increase of the levy from year to year. Hopefully!

The city does it a bit differently in that it is the city manager who has to gather the budget requests from his different entities, plus the local school district. The city manager also has more sources of tax income to include sales taxes and minor ones like the tourist lodging tax. Again the manager puts a budget together and presents to the city council, who says yea or nay without much knowledge of the intricacies of each division as each member has little contact with the workers involved.

Now on a higher level the state legislature also prepares a budget and wrangles over taxes as we see going on in a special session at the moment. Evidently, landowners are squawking about the amount of property taxes that they are having to pay, and the schools, think teachers unions, are spending more than necessary.

The state also gets to play with income tax and sales tax. The real problem is that the legislators are allowing too much to be spent from the state’s tax income and it is too easy to just go along.

On the federal level is also too easy to spend huge amounts of tax money and they have the option of cranking up the printing presses to create more money out of the ether which of course creates inflation. Sure more dollars available by each dollar is worth less so the value of wages earned also decreases. It is a vicious circle and high time for we voters to demand much more honesty in our local, state and federal government. Vote wisely!

Now on a happy note. Grannie Annie and I attended Garden Prairie’s, local country church, annual ice cream social last night. Twenty flavors of homemade ice cream with pieces of pie, cake and cookies to accompany. As many helpings as one’s conscience would allow. All at the expense of a free will donation as a fundraiser in honor of a couple of our younger generation accident victims.

Well attended and it was a happy visiting group of friends and neighbors. Both Grannie and your scribe are battling bulging waistlines and she a touch of diabetes, so restraint was in order but we both pushed the limit a bit. Anything for a good cause — right?

Most country churches in our out west Great Plains have disbanded due to a shrinking rural population. Still our local community is still blessed with three active country churches. North of town is the above-mentioned Garden Prairie which is Methodist and not far away those of Catholic persuasion gather at St Ann. Then south of McCook one finds St John’s which is Lutheran.

In my youth the church building some 20 miles north of town was known as the Quick Church and the Quick Post Office was across our highway 83 and a bit south.

They also hosted a baseball diamond and really good country baseball team. Garden Prairie is currently pastored by the Rev. Jeff Kelley as sort of an extra voluntary duty from his responsibilities at Memorial Methodist Church in McCook.

They regularly meet at 5 p.m. on Sunday and special events like the ice cream social can take precedence to a formal service. Visitors of all persuasions are more than welcome and that is the beauty of the welcoming congregation. Then as now it is a chance to get together for friends and neighbors that mostly live miles apart.

It was the church of choice of Grannie Annie’s family as she grew up living about ten miles west of there.

Now that you may have missed a wonderful homemade ice cream social the next big event will be a soup supper. The weather will be much colder so soup will be more than welcome and there will be a great variety created by some wonderful country cooks.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail