County Council raised our property taxes again Re: “MontCo Council approves $33m in pension, health cuts,” May 19
Thank you, Brian Hughes, for the little sidebar “Property tax rate to rise” within the larger article on the overall budget cuts. So first we learn the WSSC is increasing our water and sewer bills, and now seven of nine members of the Montgomery County Council have “straw” voted a 1 percent increase in our property taxes. Will an apology be forthcoming to those of us on fixed incomes?
When will Montgomery County voters fire these people? When will we stop voting for people just because they’re Democrats? Can we just once look at their actions and vote accordingly?
I’ve already sent my appreciation to Councilmembers Nancy Floreen, D-at large, and Phil Andrews, D-Gaithersburg, for their bravery in voting against it. Will anyone else join me?
Katie Holland
Silver Spring
No GOP candidate has good ideas on health care
Re: “Gingrich and Romney run against their own party,” May 18
As Michael Barone says, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are running against their own party. One rejects Ryan-care and the other defends Massachusetts-care. Neither satisfies the GOP requirement that government must be made smaller.
Not one Republican candidate has a proposal that can deliver results like health care systems in other countries such as Germany are delivering: good medical care at half the price (as a percentage of gross domestic product) as here in the United States.
Since the GOP has no new ideas, only tired slogans emblematic of approaches that are counterproductive and worse than ineffective, Obama wins in a walk in 2012. Who wants to go back to the deregulation that gave us the mortgage mess and the resulting depression? Who wants to preserve the irresponsible tax cuts Bush used to buy the presidency when, prior to those cuts, we had budget surpluses?
It’s too bad The Examiner does not realize it is supporting a dead GOP platform
Richard C. Kreutzberg
Chevy Chase
Pols to blame for Mark Center fiasco
Re: “Alexandria approves parking restrictions near Mark Center,” May 16
The Mark Center dilemma is a direct result of disingenuous local politicians and members of Congress who fudged statistics to bring in money for local developers, but are now trying to turn over an unusable facility to the Department of Defense.
With the connivance of Rep. Jim Moran, they persuaded DoD to relocate some personnel in Arlington within the 8th Congressional District, arguing that the existing transportation infrastructure would be adequate because they purposely limited the number of parking spaces at the new facility to encourage car pooling.
The basic flaw is that the federal government’s flexible working conditions are not conducive to car pooling, which is why the rate has dropped by half over the past few years.
Now we have a large facility with inadequate parking, moves by Alexandria to limit off-facility parking, and inadequate infrastructure for the expected influx of personnel. Under these conditions, I encourage DoD to work with Congress to declare this facility unusable and find a new location where employees will not have to worry about parking every day. And I hope that local voters punish these politicians at the polls.
William S. Barker
Arlington
