Business as usual can’t continue

To the editor,

I strongly support raising the Mat Su Borough bed tax we were advised to raise eight years ago — and to change the focus. In this time of local need, we should immediately raise the transient accommodations (bed) tax to at least 8 percent — and redirect it to community services.

Has anybody noticed our borough financial circumstances and that of the state have changed — drastically? We cannot continue as usual — we need to at least pay down our financial obligations, regain lost revenues and initiate new revenue sources, rebuild savings, contain and maintain the glut of development from the last five years, and otherwise stop the hemorrhage of public funds through local government to the private sector.

Are taxpayers willing to subsidize a visitors center the hospitality industry itself questions?

Especially considering the dedication by the borough already this year of the $1M proceeds from the problem riddled sale of the land under the current center and Veterans Memorial, this is an ideal time to turn in a more urgent and realistic direction.

One way to accomplish this redirection for residents and visitors both is through transferring responsibility for bed tax revenues to the Health and Social Services Board. The H&SS Board can establish long term health and safety goals for bed tax revenues through public process to solve current or chronic (not future) human and environmental health and safety issues that reflect the health, safety, and quality of life emphasis in borough code, comprehensive plan, and related public documents seemingly trampled in the borough's failed and failing race to growth and development.

It's past time for local government to turn from special interests to serving the good of the whole. This is about fulfilling a public trust. It's local government's job and ethical obligation — and in the lapse of local government to do so, it is residents' responsibility to remind our government to use our taxes for health and safety within borough boundaries before inviting in more outsiders and additional system stressors.

If we want high quality services and well maintained infrastructure without substantial

residential tax hikes, it's time to do our job to tell local government where else to seek those revenues — tell them clearly and strongly, often, in print, and with reminders of the

consequences for not heeding the public will to do the public good.

This is one resident's shot at one way to do so.

Patty Rosnel

Palmer