By GERALD ANTOS
Los Alamos

I just finished reading the story about recreation development and I must confess that Los Alamos County Council Vice Chair Susan O’Leary has just proven beyond a shadow that she wants to completely empty the pockets of the citizens of Los Alamos County to finance her fiefdom’s infrastructure well beyond reason and frankly Susan O’Leary makes me want to be sick. 

Is there really no end to her spend thrift ways? I was under the assumption that our County Government wanted to be fiscally responsible but here again we see that O’Leary actually says she wants to once  again pick our pockets and raise our property taxes to accomplish these new developments. Maybe they will include a few bottles of snake oil with these tax increases!

I am not saying that we don’t need some recreation development … we do! We just don’t need all of it at once like she is suggesting. This is so similar to many of the County’s other large-scale projects. If we build these projects on the backs of the property owners, with the hope that people will come here in droves and pay the usage fees, we fall back into the ‘If you build it, they will come’ mentality. 

If they don’t, the property owners still have to foot the bill. How about building things for the town and not for the world? Instead of talking about the draw it will have on the few LANL employees that might come to Los Alamos and decide to live here instead of Santa Fe, how about talking about how you will pay for it, recover the initial and maintenance costs and take the financial load off of the property owners with a specific removal of the property tax on a specific date.

But oh yea … the County will NEVER let go of that property tax increase … we just saw that with the school bond issue.

I personally believe it’s time for at least one recall in our County and maybe more!