presstalk 671-TALK

- Thu, May, 23, 2013 • Creating a new hotel/motel tax is a terrible idea on several levels. First, taxes should only be implemented for a specific need — and then only after no other revenue source is found. In this case, it seems to me that the Town administrator has discovered that we are allowed to create such a tax, therefore we should. Last week’s farragutpress editorial forcefully made this point about Farragut’s backward process of taxing first and then finding a need for its use. I have no doubt that the politicians now in power could manage to spend the money that they collect in the guise of having new parks to attract the hordes of tourists that are flooding to “historic” Farragut and the result would be to perhaps spend $25 of tax revenue to create $1 of tourism. Second, and more troubling, is the sense I get from reading about this effort is that we can get something good for ourselves such as more parks and have someone else (hotel patrons from out of town) pay for it. This is the attitude that has changed our society from being self-reliant to one where there are more takers of government services than payers. Shame on the Farragut politicians for promoting the idea that taxes are OK as long as someone else pays them. I can only hope that they would have thought this idea through more thoroughly if they were going to tax Farragut residents, because we all know how successful that effort would have been. read more