Taxes, Hadley and zoning

As a concerned citizen of Ellis County, I felt the need to point out some problems with our present county commission. The most glaring problem is their disregard for the spirit of the law, laws that they themselves passed for Ellis County.

One example is the acceptance of the conditional use permit application from Hays Wind LLC, which specifies the area to be granted a permit is drawn back 1,000 feet from the boundary of the property so that there are no neighbors to the applicants.

The commissioners followed this same tactic with the cell tower in Victoria. I fear that now a precedent has been set. From now on, no matter the request, be it putting up a roller coaster the size of Orlando's The Incredible Hulk, the commissioners will see to it that the requesting landowner will make himself his own neighbor in order to get the conditional use permit passed.

Because of the commissioners' past behavior of showing no concern for the citizen's of Ellis County, I now have a new worry, the Hadley building. Even if there is not public support for spending $10 million on the Hadley building, they may choose to do the project anyway and spend the money from other sources. The county commission should be in trouble with the general public if (a) they make moves in this direction before it comes up for a public vote in November, or (b) if they do this after the bond issue is defeated in November. But will the public even notice?

The public seems not to question the truthfulness of the claims that the commissioners made concerning taxes. The commissioners claim that they did not raise taxes and maybe even cut taxes because (a) they lowered the mill levy by one mill, and (b) they cut $300,000 from the requests made by department heads.

We know that lowering the mill levy by one mill does not lower taxes when the property valuation had gone up much more than that. In reality, they have lowered our tax rate while increasing taxes. (Perhaps this could be compared with raising prices by, say, 10 percent and then having a "1 percent sale.") And please note that they approved increased spending of about $2.4 million.

I am concerned, and I believe you should be concerned, too. One solution to this problem is to vote your concerns this November.

Rod Bittel

1101 Noose Road