THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605160219
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 31 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
Our heartfelt thanks for the assistance you gave us in our effort to raise funds for Claymon Sawyer and his family in their time of need. The spirit you display and the help you give in community projects is to be admired.
We would also like to give a BIG thanks to the many hundreds of people who contributed their time and effort toward this endeavor. With everyone's help, $3,000 was raised, and $1,000 more was sent to the family by individuals.
Friends drove to Arcadia, Fla., on May 17, personally delivering the funds to the Sawyer family. Their surprise and gratitude to the Albemarle community was emotionally overwhelming.
Again, many thanks.
Bill Durham
Vince Chory
Committee for Friends of Claymon Sawyer
Elizabeth City Repeal the food tax
Reports on the North Carolina General Assembly require response. In discussing repeal of the food tax, Rep. Bill Owens seems to believe ``confusion will reign'' in food stores, especially in rural North Carolina, because of the different amount of tax that would apply to food versus non-food items.
Since this problem was solved in the 1960s when food stamps were introduced, Mr. Owens must know this assumption is mistaken. Not only can employees master this, but today's computers can be programmed to take care of it.
Mr. Owens' threatened repeal of the county portion of the food tax is nothing but an old-fashioned scare tactic used by him to stir up fear and discontent among local authorities and residents. To offset the county repeal, which is not a natural extension of the subject under consideration, he raises the awful specter of increased real estate taxes. Don't let that fool you. It won't happen. No one except Mr. Owens has ever even mentioned repealing the county portion of this unfair tax. Those who have worked at getting this repeal passed have maintained that the 2 percent county portion must be retained.
Mr. Owens' assertion that repealing the food tax will help only ``upper-income people and the out-of-town tourists,'' rather than the poor and elderly, is also a mistake. Material provided by staff members of the General Assembly commission on revenue indicates that North Carolina citizens living on low and fixed incomes spend a greater percentage of those incomes on food taxes than do the well-off. Or tourists, I suspect.
This repeal was proposed and pushed last year in the legislature. While part of the income tax and the intangibles tax were repealed, the tax on food failed to make the cut. None of the present concern about replacing funds lost was evident when those other bills passed. It has no place now. As Mr. Owens' colleague, Mr. Bill Culpepper, remarked, it's a matter of setting priorities and cutting fat. Gov. Jim Hunt agrees. He has at least proposed a 1 percent cut in the food tax. It's a start.
Mr. Owens and Sen. Basnight are opposed to the repeal of this tax, even though 70 percent of North Carolina's voters believe that it's time for the little guy to get a break. Those of us who agree with them should call or write our legislators, urging them to change their minds about this unfair tax.
Kathryne Thompson
Nags Head Wasting our money
Once again I find myself appalled at the ``good ole boys''' distorted and illogical thinking based on selfish morality.
How can our commissioners possibly justify charging the Dare taxpayer for expenses related to their attendance at a private citizen's funeral? Mr. Langford Sr., to my knowledge, was never a Dare County employee, and if these commissioners truly wanted to honor this man, they certainly should have done so individually and at their own expense - privately.
As for criticizing Ms. Shirley Hassell's conduct, I believe the other commissioners would not be so emotional and upset if they had nothing to hide. Ms. Hassell, despite merciless and malicious personal attacks, is merely trying to do the job we elected her to do - to make certain that our tax monies are spent wisely and honestly.
In order to effectively do that, it is, of course, necessary that she know the pertinent related facts - something the other commissioners, for some suspicious reason, refuse to let her obtain. If they have nothing to hide, then why not let her have access to information that should be obtainable by every citizen who pays taxes? Instead, she is forced to have the courts demand this information to be released.
Regarding the public comportment of OUR representatives, Ms. Hassell has always honorably stuck to the facts, never resorted to ``name calling,'' as Bobby Owens did once with her.
All of this wasted time and energy could be eliminated if the members of the board were open and honest with each other and with the Dare citizens and began using their heads instead of their emotions.
Marie-Louise Reifschneider
Kitty Hawk by CNB