Don’t reward council’s bad financial decisions

When our City Council is willing to hold meetings nearly every night to convince us that we should vote yes, it is time to be skeptical. The council wants us to extend the local-option sales tax for another 20 years when its record with the current LOST is dismal.

First the council sat on the collected revenue for months without making a disbursement. Then it hired a consultant with some sales tax money to tell the council how the funds should be disbursed. More than $1 million of the sales tax will be spent on the library even though FEMA would have paid (close to) 100 percent if the council had chosen a different site.

Do you think the council will start making sound financial decisions when it has 20 years worth of revenues to play with? I don't know about you but I'm still waiting for my property taxes to go down with the 10 percent from the current sales tax. The sales tax that is in place was put there for flood recovery. Our council has found many ways to interpret that term and it will do that with the new tax if we approve it.

David Jelinek

Cedar Rapids