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4A ♦ SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2006 Mansion djmmtal OPINION Daniel F. Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Foy S. Evans Managing Editor Editor Emeritus A step toward consolidation Vision 20/20 is moving forward toward recommending that Warner Robins take over fire protection from the county north of Highway 96. There is significant overlap in service now being provided. City firefighters often are on the scene in the county before county firefighters arrive. Fire Chief Robert Singletary of Warner Robins is in favor of consolidation of ser vices. At the present time Warner Robins has 100 full time employees in its fire depart ment, with a budget of $6.3 million. The county gets by with 11 full time employees who staff eight fire stations at a cost of $1.4 million annu ally. City resi dents pay for their fire protection through prop erty taxes. Residents out side the city pay a special tax of 1.19 mill for fire protec tion. There is a big disparity in what city and county residents pay for fire insur ance. Warner Robins has an ISO rating of 6. The county’s ISO rating is 3. Insurance premiums are based on the ISO rating. The subject of expanding Warner Robins fire protection beyond the city limits has been discussed by 20/20 for a long time. It has now reached the point where the Middle Georgia Regional Development Commission has been called on to make a cost analysis. Most Houston Countians express a desire to see county and city services consolidated where feasible. Once the analysis has been received it is possible that Vision 20/20 will recommend that the county commissioners and Warner Robins city officials move forward on con solidation. Some residents of unincorporated Houston County fear that this is a money making ruse on the part of the city. We cannot conceive that the city will receive financial benefits from taking over fire protection outside the city. However, there has been concern for a long time that it is difficult for public safety personnel to distinguish between what is and is not in the city limits. The agreement now in existence between the county and city really wipes out this confusion, but it is not an ideal situation. It will be easy to pull this off, once a deci sion is made. Chief Singletary is ready to take on the additional responsibility. It would be a significant step toward com bining city and county services where the public will benefit. Letier to th e Editor Most agree with Wood I and many, if not all, county residents agree with Walton Wood (in a recent letter to the editor). We have not even paid for the recent Back-Door tax increase (property re-evaluations) and the Vision 20/20 group is already working on a way to increase our taxes again! I recently escaped the Perry city limit taxes by moving above Ga Hwy 96 into unincorporated Warner Robins. Garbage collection in the Perry city limits is practically double the county at $19.50 per month for one garbage can and my city taxes were roughly 70 percent the amount of my county taxes. I could not find anywhere that I got my moneys worth for either! 1 was See LETTER, page >/l The subject of expanding Warner Robins fire protection beyond the city limits has been discussed by 20/20 for a long time. It has now reached the point where the Middle Georgia Regional Development Commission has been called on to make a cost analysis. Most Houston Countians express a desire to see county and city services consolidated where feasible. Corporations and parents should pay A federal judge has allowed Delta Airlines to get out from under its retirement obligations to it pilots. This means that responsibility of paying the pilots’ retirement income will rest on the shoulders of taxpay ers. This has happened before with other airlines and other corporations. They promise retirement packages to employees, underfund the retirement, get into financial trouble and dump responsibility of paying their employ ees’ retirement benefits. Somebody got to some congressmen to persuade them to write a law which makes this possible. Many corporations - big and small - get into financial trouble and use the generous bankruptcy laws to reor ganize, stay in business and leave the landscape strewn with creditors who get a few cents on the dollar or nothing. They pay clever lawyers who specialize in this kind of thing handsomely, top executives keep their generous salaries and benefits, salaries of employees are cut and who cares? The people who should suffer, while their mismanagement creates hard ship and suffering for everyone else, usually are rewarded and permitted to start over free of debt. While corporations that reorganize this way are praised for “getting out of bankruptcy” and providing jobs, nobody weeps for the many creditors who lose money and are victims of the rwytmmMroiEwNal notw m.'-mccm'fl F M)11 i tv,^ I Tu&iiewKeoFeecwx I wAßCflMiNAvseoffce f L whatever \r i L mwKAßoorwe -J / 1 wwthetcorj f wft He T nope-' zow one 1 May I have some catfish and hushpuppfes? There is a report out saying that Southerners are fatter than most folks. The Trust for America’s Health claims that eight of the 10 states with the porkiest people are located in the South. Jeff Levi, the group’s executive director, is quoted as saying that he is stumped as to why Southerners get fatter than the rest of the country. He says it could involve “socio-economic” and “cultural” fac tors. You need to know right off that Dr. Levi graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio and from Dartmouth and most likely doesn’t know a Moon Pie from a moonbeam. The reason that we are fatter than everybody else is that our food is better, and because it is better, we eat a lot of it. Duh! Southerners can cook rings around anybody north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and west of New Orleans. Our family matriarch, Aunt Callie, could fry a bucket of mud and have every body begging for seconds. Cack, as we called her, never saw a recipe book in her She just turned the stove up as high as it would go, threw lard and salt in the skillet and cooked the bejeezus out of whatever hit the pan, including fried chicken, country-fried steak, fried okra, fried green tomatoes and fried apple pies. And when we cleaned our plates, we had homemade chocolate cake and lots of sweet tea to wash it down. I guarantee Dr. Levi didn’t eat like that at Oberlin or at Dartmouth. He probably had broccoli, asparagus and English peas and then finished off his meal with a tangerine. Good thing OPINION process. As they say, only in America. Opportunity flourishes for those who hire the right lawyers who specialize in this sort of thing. Just feel proud that some of your tax dollars are paying for the retirement of thousands of workers whose employers were permitted to pass the responsibil ity over to you and me. ■ ■■ J A video clip of a coach at a youth football game charging onto the field and knocking down a player is call ing attention to a problem that exists almost everywhere. A fight erupted on the field with parents and players from both team participating. That is not what youth sports pro grams are supposed to be about. We have had incidents in Houston County where parents have verbally abused players for opposing teams and there have been some incidents of adults getting overheating and getting he never met Cack. No way he would be fretting over how fat Southerners are. He’d be too busy eating her but tered cornbread to care. In case you haven’t already gone to the refrigerator for some butter milk, you might be interested to know that Georgia ranks 12th among fat states not anything to brag about, particularly since we lag Mississippi and Alabama, two states that we see in our rearview mirror on about any measurement you care to make. The real embarrassment is that people in Michigan are bigger lard bottoms than we are. What in the world could people in Michigan be eating that is more fat tening than peach cobbler? Maybe they deep-fry their cranberries. Among several recommendations from the Washington pointy-heads in the fight on fat is for businesses to offer their workers “nutrition counsel ing.” It makes me wonder if anybody at the Trust for America’s Health has ever held a real job in the real world. (“Folks, we are getting our brains beat out by the competition. Our costs are up and our profits are down, but let’s take a minute and talk about cucum- Foy Evans Columnist foyevansl9@cox.net Dick Yarbrough Columnist yarb24oo@bellsouth.net HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL into tussling matches. These adult* exhibitions of childish activities should not be condoned and participants should be barred for the rest of the year from attending games. Better yet, something Claude Lewis, the outstanding recreation director who made Warner Robins’ program one of the best anywhere, and I talked about years ago. We agreed that it might not be an idea to bar parents from attending their children’s games. Many parents live their fantasies through their children. They often abuse their own chil dren when they do not perform up to expectations. They get into heated arguments and, sometimes, physical contact with other parents over what goes on on the field. It doesn’t make sense. But it hap pens too often. The recreation programs are for the children, not the parents. Let the par ents drop the children off before the game and pick them up after the game. I imagine that there are many boys and girls who would be thrilled if this happened and they did not have to face the ire and criticism of demanding parents. The father who incited the riot early this week will face criminal charges, as he should. But that is not what should be expect ed as a result of a football game. And it really is just a game. Nothing else. bers.”) And, of course, the Trust for America’s Health, like any of the innumerable special-interest groups that exist in Washington, thinks government needs to get more involved. Government involvement can justify their existence and make them a “player” inside the Beltway. The more laws they can get passed, the more influence they have. And the more meddling in our personal lives we have to endure. The last thing we need is a government nanny telling us what to eat. What business is it of government what I eat and whether I fry it or consume it raw? If these people get their way, we might have to get some bureaucrat’s approval before we can scarf down our catfish and hushpuppies. If our government can’t keep illegal immigrants from coming and going across our borders, how are they going to keep some kid from eating a double cheeseburger with fries and a shake? If Momma and Daddy don’t want their child looking like a walrus, can’t they just utter the “no” word? I have a wonderful solution to this problem. I think exercise is the answer. Therefore, I would suggest that Dr. Levi and his colleagues at the Trust for America’s Health take a hike. As for me, I am going to exercise, too. I plan to exercise my right to continue to enjoy down-home Southern cooking. Pass the biscuits and gravy, please. You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb24oo@bellsouth.net, P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139, or Web site: www.dickyarbrough.com.