Sell, Springfield, Sell <br><br>
I grow weary listening to Springfield bellyaching about its financial woes. Springfield does not have a financial crisis. It has a crisis of management which fails to make bold, necessary decisions to solve the problems. For a time we believed there would be help with the appointment of the Control Board, but we quickly realized it is but one level of inept government attempting to help another level of inept government with little result except implementing fees (bureaucrat-speak for taxes).
Springfield can ameliorate if not eliminate the financial problem by divesting. Sell off the entities better managed by the private sector. Sell the Water/Sewer department. Based on recent buyouts of public water/sewer works by private waterworks, the department could sell for upwards of $100 million. Private sewer works are purchasing and installing microturbines which capture polluting methane gas to generate electricity. Sell the city-owned parking lots/garages. Why should the city be in this business which competes with property tax-paying private enterprises, while the city pays overly generous retirement benefits? Sell the two golf courses, the skating rink, the poorly managed, underutilized Symphony Hall. Sell the properties taken for nonpayment of taxes.
Advantages of divesting: the city could receive a one-time windfall from each sold entity. Reduce city payroll headcount without layoff or job loss as the positions shift to the private sector. Increase tax revenue as sold entities become property-taxable. Reduce city budgets as sold entities require no further city funding. Even when European Eastern Bloc countries divested and stabilized their tax rates, they prospered. Perhaps the same can occur in Springfield. There are solutions without increasing taxes, installing revenue-generating traffic-intersection TV cameras, or decreasing/eliminating services.
Robert V. Fioravanti<br>Ludlow<br><br>
Mall America
The Gettysburg Address speaks of sanctifying a noble battlefield created in defense of this great nation, in the struggle for universal freedom. These freedoms are now surrendered without a shot being heard. The American public takes and consumes and pollutes, isolated by comfort, ignorance and might. While its brave young men and women stain the Iraqi sand red with their life's blood, the important news is the walk of a spoilt avaricious child to a police car, televised unendingly from a hovering helicopter. I am urged to buy an SUV far too big for my needs, or watch the daily ruminations of a talentless nonentity, or watch a hotdog-eating contest while my newspaper reports on efforts to reduce hunger and obesity in the U.S. America thrives on the planet's shopping mall, where everything is for sale at a knockdown price. America plunders the world for all its wealth and replaces its cultures. It cares not what the cost is, as long as the mall is open tomorrow.
Brandon McHale
Brookline, Vt.
