🎙️ Another great answer by someone explaining why Amendment 3 is in our best interest.
👊TY Stephen Williams for laying out such common sense for YES Amendment 3.
💡 Plus, if you buy a car, you pay taxes. If you make payments or pay it off, you never pay taxes again, do you 🤔.
You asked, “What scare tactics?”
Since you’re in Polk County, let’s use your county.
Polk County spends tens of millions on Recreation and Cultural Arts, including special events, arts and poetry festivals, storytelling festivals, heritage festivals and other recreational programming (their words not mine).
Polk County’s own budget labels that recreation program NOT MANDATED.
So before anyone tells me Amendment 3 means fewer ambulances or closed fire stations, I want to know what else got cut first.
Did you cut:
consultants?
vacant administrative positions?
duplicative departments?
marketing campaigns?
special events?
arts and cultural grants?
nonessential recreation programs?
travel and conferences?
outside studies?
pet projects?
beautification projects?
discretionary grants?
programs government simply does not need to be in?
I’m not saying every one of those things is worthless.
I’m saying county government is not supposed to be all things to all people.
Its core job is much simpler:
Police. Fire. EMS. Roads. Infrastructure. Basic essential services.
Fund those FIRST.
Everything else should have to justify its existence with whatever money remains.
So if Polk County ever tells me:
“Sorry, we had to cut your ambulance because taxpayers kept too much of their own money,”
my first question is still:
Did you cut the poetry festival before you cut the paramedic?
Because if you didn’t, Amendment 3 didn’t fail.
Your priorities did.