Kevin Carrigan must be psychic or else I am. I had pen in hand to write almost the same letter as Mr. Carrigan wrote to The A-T Nov. 14. I'm very happy and surprised someone in this town had the nerve to confront our local government. It is way past time to adjust compensation of the highest-paid officials.
The only change I would have made was to insist on a 40-percent reduction in pay for our highest officials. That includes the county commissioners, also. I think the judges also should volunteer to take a huge pay cut. Most of our senior citizens, including myself, are earning 50-75 percent less on our investments than we were four years ago. Yet we are expected to keep paying higher and higher compensation to our elected officials and managers.
We had a population of 25,500 in 1956 and our last census counted 17,400. Our leaders keep talking about 18,000 citizens. We can't have anything close to that even if we count dogs and cats. When The A-T was locally owned, it printed the compensation of all city and county elected officials on a regular basis. I would like to see that happen again.
I would like to see the city and county governments make the same pay reductions as the private sector. I also would like to see senior citizens age 62 and older have the real estate tax on their primary home reduced 50 percent and freeze it there for as long as they own the home.
Norman Rose,
Tiffin
