Stop being sneaky, Marion City Council

Look out Marion, here it comes. This time it's hidden in a small yellow notice in your water bill. The City Council is set to pass a resolution to tack an urban forest utility fee of $3.60 to your water bill starting in July, when water bills go up anyway because of lawn watering. What does the city's tree maintenance program have to do with our water bill?

They say that this is because of increasing tree maintenance cost and the possibility of losing ash trees to the emerald ash borer. They say that the trees are competing with the streets for money and this will build up reserve to remove any dead ash trees, if necessary. If not necessary, where will the money go? Into the general fund to be spent at the pleasures of the tax-and-spend City Council?

Where is all the street money? Isn't this what the local option tax was for? Why did they need a road paver machine and all the improvements to their maintenance compound when the potholes on some roads in the city will wreak havoc with your auto?

They say this will relieve the necessity for a tax increase to remove the trees but isn't this a tax before it is required? It comes to a 9 percent tax on a water bill of $40 a month. Call City Council and tell them to stop trying to sneak things through or we will vote them out in the next election and let them find other people's money to spend.

Ronald B. Williams

Marion