California in Kissimmee?

By the way the Kissimmee City Commission meeting went last night, we can only assume that our favorite local activist must now be consulting our commissioners. The message: don your tin-foil hat because the public is out to get us and they must be stopped.

Residents of the City are going to finally be able to have a citizen charter review committee, with only one small catch – the committee will not have any power. Yep, the Kissimmee City Commission felt they needed to keep “full control” of the CITIZEN review process and only let the CITIZENS review a few aspects of the charter. Last week, the commission finalized election reform changes to our charter that did not have true public input opportunities, and lastnight at the appointment meeting for the charter review committee, multiple parts of the charter were locked away from possible review. Those tin-foil hats are great empire protectors.

Once the madness of the broken charter review committee passed into the afterlife of political hope, the issues of tax increases were next on the Agenda. First we would like to state for clarification that we do believe in a better mix of revenue generation for our city government. We firmly believe that the Fire Fee is an issue that should have been passed years ago, but was not because too many were afraid of the ax the tax bobbleheads. However, now in a rush to see how much money it can make, the City Commission is taxing its residents and businesses into acquiescence and killing every economic hope our residents are clinging to. The policies of the past several commissions have stiffled smart economic growth and created a situation where the average citizen has to develop an exit strategy in order to survive. This is not good government.

In trying to defend the Fire Fee, a liberal term was thrown out there and should be seen as a sign of trouble for taxpayers. The term “Revenue Neutral” which is favored among liberal tax-and-spend politicians was the defending term used by the commission to justify charging you more money to make sure government stays fat and happy. Of course the taxypayers never get to hear the term “Expense Neutral” to defend them, but liberal ideals don’t ususally protect anyone but government.

The issue of taxes is actually very simple. Is government going to stay-the-course on the way it overspends the hard-earned money of its residents, or is government going to cut back? It is obvious the citizens have elected people to the state offices to cut their taxes. Maybe it is time for local government to do what is right by the people and make sure that they make the necessary cuts to ensure that this happens.