I am very concerned about the events that have taken place over the past 8 to 10 months from several perspectives, as a citizen, as a taxpayer, and finally, as a businessman.As a citizen with a fair amount of community pride, it hurts to see Luverne digress from a progressive, cooperative, thriving town admired by many of our peer communities, to being the brunt of what is now termed "Luverne Jokes." During the last few months, our quality of life has been affected by the controversy created in trying to solve problems that the past several city councils and city administrators apparently didn’t even know we had.As a taxpayer, I have depended on the elected officials and city and county staff to monitor their budgets and get me the highest quality of services at a reasonable cost. But I do think I understand basic accounting principles well enough to know when someone’s pulling the wool over my eyes.The word "savings" keeps popping up, and it has been said that a reallocation of the expense burden, i.e. tax dollars for law enforcement will result in the "savings of $161,400 for city taxpayers in 2005." By definition of the word "savings," the only true way to save these dollars is to cut costs. In other words, are you willing to reduce the service we currently enjoy in the area of law enforcement?In comparing my city bill 8-11-2003 versus 8-10-2004 I find that my electric bill per unit used is up by more than 5 percent, my water bill per unit used is up by 31 percent and I now pay $4 per month for street lights and fire protection that was absent from my bill last year. That’s not to mention the raise in the tax levy from 2003 to 2004 of 34.4 percent. And finally, as a businessman, I can’t help but wonder how this whole situation will affect my business. I seriously doubt that my taxes will be reduced. If the city has its way, a good portion of my clients will pay more, given that quite few of them live outside the city limits. I wonder how they will take it. I wonder if they’ll think better of us and increase the amount of business they do in town. I doubt it. Most of our retailers are having a tough time attracting customers now. I wonder if this will bring more business into Luverne. I also wonder what prospective new businesses in Minneapolis or Sioux Falls or Chicago are going to think when they want to use the new tax free zones to relocate their business to Luverne. I think that I know the answers to these questions, and I think most of the citizens of Luverne know them, too. It’s fair to ask some questions, so here’s my little "citizen survey:"1. Do you think it’s appropriate for the city to send out propaganda using your tax dollars?2. Do you think our elected officials are handling this situation the way you would want them to? Have any of them asked you how you feel about it, personally?3. Do you think some expense cutting in local government would be appropriate to balance the budget?4. Do you think spending your tax dollars to hire lawyers to litigate this problem is a good use of those dollars?5. Do you think that shifting expense burden between governmental entities to balance the budget of one is fair?The solutions to the problem are no longer just the responsibility of our elected officials or the governmental staffs. It’s our problem. As citizens and taxpayers we need to call our elected officials and let them know how we feel. It’s time to put this all behind us and get on with growing Luverne’s economy and reestablishing ourselves as a community that’s proud of who we are and how we deal with each other. Greg BurgerLuverne
