Why not purchase one new truck each year?
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Editor,
Didn’t we just go through a special Lake County election for a new school mill levy? Can’t these things be economically combined through a little decent planning?
On the road levy, let’s set aside the fact that a large number of us who don’t live in or close to town also don’t receive county road service, but still pay for that resource. I haven’t seen a county truck, for snowplowing or anything else, within miles of my home for the past 25 years, but I’ve always paid the same mill levy rate that political families in Polson do.
But can anyone divine the logic of buying twelve new trucks at the same time, twelve trucks that will probably start breaking down at the same time down the road?
When you’re spending $55,000 a year just to repair old trucks, something should tell you that there might be a smarter way to spend taxpayer money. Maybe it would be better to use that repair money instead to buy a new truck each year, and significantly reduce or eliminate those repair costs.
Doesn’t it make more sense to buy one new truck each year for ten or twelve years, after which the oldest of the vehicles would be replaced by a new purchase? That approach would enable some actual fiscal planning, of setting aside each year an enormously smaller amount of funds needed for annual truck purchases, and thus avoid special mill levies for really huge bulk purchases every ten or twelve years.
Such a constant replacement plan would probably negate the need for new levies, enable a small portion of normal revenues to be set aside to keep the plan at least flush – and probably without additional taxes.
Or does this just make too much sense?
Perhaps it would be just be too much a temptation to use that money each year instead on other town services?
Robert J. Lavin
Rollins
