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♦ SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2007 4A Daniel F. Evans President Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Tax reform or tax shift? Skip Dawkins, longtime member of the Houston County Board of Education and current presi dent of the Georgia School Boards Association, took a moment at last week’s board meeting to express some apprecia tion to Gov. Sonny Perdue. As Dawkins point ed out, the gover nor has expressed some strong doubts about House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s plan to end Georgia’s property tax and replace those reve nues by adding the sales tax to gro ceries and a wide range of services. While ending the property tax sounds like a good deal to many at first glance, the problem that has been brought up by Dawkins and many other elected officials at the local level is that the proposal, if passed, would deal a crushing blow to local control, turning over the redistribution of revenues to the state government. The plan, if passed, would also mean that poor families, while not getting much relief from the end of the property tax, would find themselves paying more for necessities such as food and non-emergency medical services. Richardson has done a service in getting See TAX, page 8A Letters to the editor Volleyball group needs support As I sat at the Houston County Board of Education work session this past Monday night and watched them review the multimillion-dollar budget, I thought those are my tax dollars at work ... and yours. I was there to pres ent a request to use Houston County School gymnasiums for Central Georgia Volleyball Association, a non-profit all volunteer organization competing on a national level with exposure to college scholarship opportunities. Without the use of community facilities our program could not exist. On Tuesday at the HCBOE meeting our request was denied. This is tragic for our program since there are very few existing community gyms in Central Georgia with vol leyball standards. I am parent and a philanthropist in Houston County and I am confused by the message this sends. We are encour aged by the schools to get them off the sofa for some exercise in their ‘Wellness Policy” and to get connected with our kids in their proposed “Be There” campaign which would cost an estimated $14,900 next year. We already get it. We are there for our kids and many others from Houston County (but) it seems like the board is talking out of both sides of their mouth. Schools in the Atlanta area and in our neighbor states allow access to their gyms and they are able to develop highly competitive programs by providing kids as young as 10 years old the opportunity to play volleyball. As a result, the girls receiving college scholarships for volleyball are from Atlanta and other states - not central Georgia. We have proven that our program can help our girls be competitive. This is the fifth season for Central Georgia Volleyball Association. We’re hoping it is not “The season that never was”. CGVA’s Board, coaches and parents will persevere for our 50 boy and girl athletes, because anything is pos sible. Carolyn Marshall, CGVA, Vice President HOW TO SUBMIT: Thsre are three ways to submit a letter to the editor: E mail it to hhj@evansnewspapers.com, mail it to Houston Home Journal at 1210 Washington St., Perry, GA 31069, or drop it off at the same location between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Letters should not exceed 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and telephone number (the last two not printed). The newspaper reserves the right to edit or reject letters for reasons of grammar, punctuation, taste and brevity. Foy S. Evans Editor Emeritus Don Moncrief Managing Editor “Richardson has done a service in getting the issues of taxation open for public discussion and debate, and there is general support for tax reform, but the plan he reportedly plans to present to the Georgia House of Representatives at the beginning of the 2008 session is troubling to virtually all of Houston County’s local elected officials.” BELIEF Thanksgiving: I guess that's it Thanksgiving: I guess that’s it. Thanksgiving: My favorite holiday(s) of the year. We get Thursday (and, actually, we usually close early on Wednesday) and Friday off. Couple that with the weekend, and you have four days in a row. And, it’s not too hectic - especially for me since I don’t prepare the Thanksgiving din ner - and there’s lots of family. It’s very nice. Yes, Thanksgiving is probably it for me. Which, gets me to thinking about all I have and have had for which to be thankful. Here are some of them. Just a few. | A mother, who at 87 years is still “sharp as a tack,” is a joy to be around, and makes the best roast beef, rice and gravy and Thanksgiving meal in America. | A wife who is always positive, always cheerful, and is ready to tackle any project, no matter how big or com plicated. Yeah, I know, “Janice is the best thing that ever happened to me”. E An inside bathroom and a hot shower, and that wonderful “during my life-time invention” called air con ditioning, which made the hot Georgia summers tolerable. And, it made Georgia the best place to live in the world! B A farm. Our own farm. Momma says I got my love for the land from my daddy. I guess I did -1 can see him now, in my mind, down on his knees dig ging in his peanuts to see if they had “pegged-down yet” - or cutting young pecans in two to see how the fruit was going to be. B And speaking of Daddy, his read- /'"T/’'#%>,O / ...Don’t worry. \ A /-\ ( How much longer j f x J ) \ can hold on? J .w-Vj] Messy neighbors paying the cost The thud you are about to hear is my very wise (and tidy) wife fainting. I am about to commit nearly 650 words to the subject of cleaning up after yourself, not one of my strong suits. OK, maybe not even a suit at all, more like a no trump or not playing with a complete deck. The subject arose after a couple ideas crossed my mind this weekend (a third, picking up my socks, escaped me). I read in the business section of Sunday’s Independent that, according to a recent national survey, 45 percent of respondents said leaving a mess was a pet peeve of theirs at the office. That ranked only behind gossip and slackers as the worst of workplace behavior. This was one day after I read a story on the newspaper’s front page that it will take 10 years and S2O million to clean up the mess somebody left on Engleman Road. Granted, volatile organic compounds with names so long they have to have numbers attached is much more serious than the tuna fish on rye sitting two weeks in the break room fridge. The cause, however, is the same. Somebody failed to clean up after himself. ()//(' ro/rr ((/ft nn/fi'c a Larry Walker Columnist lwalker@whgb-law.com ing the “funny papers” to me before I could even talk, resulting in my first word being “read” and my love of books and reading. g| Four great children and seven wonderful grandchildren, all within 10 miles of where we live, and all of whom are mighty sweet to us. What a blessing! | And writing of children and grandchildren, what about our four super-sharp in-laws? No wonder our grandchildren are so special. And, my great in-laws, J. O. And Judy Knighton. Mr. Knighton is gone, but still remem bered. B A great place to live. Clean - both physically and politically. Progressive and yet with deference to the past and tradition. | A good church - not perfect, like the people in it - but, mighty good. Good music and the “best-in-the-pul pit” preacher I have ever heard. B Friends - so many wonderful friends! They are there in happy times and they are really there in sad times. We know, we have experienced it both ways. I’d like to name them, but I don’t have the space, and I’d surely omit some that we love very much. George Ayoub Morris News Service george.ayoub@morris.com If you want to take me to the over simplification woodshed, fine, but I would argue that leaving a mess for someone else to take care of means socks on the floor, funky sandwiches in the refrigerator and 1,000 tons of contaminated dirt leeching poison into the groundwater. The difference, of course, is that nobody gets sick or worse with the first two. No, I did not leave 1,1-dichloroethyl ene, 1,1,1-trichloroethaneor 1,1-dichlo roethane in the ground and eventually the water. Yes, I do leave my socks on the floor, but even after a good workout my Gold Toes and Swooshes pose a threat only to the olfactories. They do not sicken anyone. It may take us as long in court to determine who failed to clean up after themselves on Engleman as it does to clean it up. Superfund site regulations oil'*, Al HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL ■ An invitation to go quail hunting or “fish in our pond”. Do you know how much it cost to have a good pond or to have bird dogs, bird buggies, and quail? El Mr. Weir and Ben. I couldn’t have a farm without their help. Thanks at Thanksgiving. El Great teachers, when I came along, who are still living. Florence, Herb, Earl Herman, Jeanne, Molly, and Jim come to mind. I’m thankful that I can call them by their first names, but I don’t often do it, do I, Mrs. Harrison, Coach, Mr. Cheek, Mrs. Bledsoe, Mrs. Moss, and Mayor? ■ The Georgia Bulldogs. They don’t win all of the time, but they win enough to make us happy more than most. Go Dawgs. El Water. “They” said it would be more important than oil. Well, it looks as if “they” might be right. Thanks for one of the world’s largest underground aquifers right here in Middle Georgia. At least, that’s what “they” say. | Riley Hunt, Frank Shelton, Larry Wood and Perry Volunteer Outreach. | Battle Creek, Mich., and the com, wheat, rice and oats products that emanate therefrom. Without these, I might have starved to death! ■ Law partners. Good lawyers and great people. And, the best staff I’ve had in 42 years in the business. And, memories of past staff ‘super-stars’ like Lois Athon, Richard Home, and Mary Lynn Harrison. I could name others. ■ Four wonderful grandparents See WALKER, page SA compel those responsible to pay for the cleansing, even though the damage has already been inflicted on the environ ment and certainly on the psyche of those who want to trust that a glass of cold water from their faucet is safe to drink. Simply paying for your mess differs from taking responsibility for it. In the office, according to research, few things irritate us more than a co worker who leaves behind a mess: the copy room in shambles, the break room littered, the conference room unfit for conferences. In the workplace we grumble a little first. Then we post notes, threatening to padlock the refrigerator, get rid of all the coffee cups or do away with the microwave. Occasionally a brave soul will get directly in the grill of the offender to detail his or her messy shortcomings. That usually works. It is not exactly clear how one goes about handling a messy neighbor up the groundwater stream when a com pany, sometimes a large, impersonal and secure company, is the problem. Four Grand Island subdivisions who have filed a lawsuit to fix responsibil ity are asking themselves the same See AYOUB, page