LETTER TO THE EDITOR

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Wed, 10/13/2021 - 07:54
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VOTE “NO” FOR $33 MILLION AMBUSH OF NEW HOSPITAL TAXES

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Thanks Clark and Matt for starting this urgently needed public, communitywide, out-of-the-closet-finally, massive new tax conversation which we all start voting on this coming Monday, Oct 18th!

An older brother came to to me in church this past Sunday morning and said something like this; “André, I MUST speak with you privately today on an urgent matter!”

We slipped to the back of the church immediately and with a little more privacy between us, he continued with unabashed passion.

“Did you know that there is a $33 million, 30-year hospital bond on the ballot next week, right here in Madison County? Do you know about this? Does anybody know about this!?”

“Do you know that if this horrible proposition passes into law we have an 87-year-old brother, right here in our congregation, who will have to pay nearly $2,000 more taxes every year on his family property, with a very small fixed income for both him and his darli wife? They don’t have the money to pay for this enormous new tax burden and there is no grandfather clause to protect them! Nothing!”

“Who is behind this ambush and how do we stop this cancer of unneede taxation? We don’t want a $33 million hospital in Madisonville when we have St. Joe’s Emergency Care and that new Emergency Clinic going in across from the County Jail, and we’re only a 2 minute drive to Huntsville Memorial by EMT or driving.”

“Everybody who owns property in Madison County, with NO EXEMPTION will be paying $250-$10,000 a year in new taxes and nobody knows it yet! This is bad, bad business and terrible government. How do we stop them?” I told him we could start by writing a letter for the paper and joining the barely-budding, urgently needed, Madison County conversation. Then, I said, we could tell everyone to go and VOTE “NO” on Madison County Hospital District Proposition A, and stop the levy of of new, universal property taxes and the proposed issuance of $33 million in bond debt.

The Dean family of Elwood will be voting “Against” Proposition #9 on the ballot starting next Monday October 18th at the Courthouse on the Square 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM, on the unwanted and clearly unneeded 30-years of ambushed, crippling, proposed new hospital taxation. We unitedly beat back this taxation monster demanding a new hospital here a decade ago, and together we can defeat this mythological Hydra next week at the polls, for our elderly and our grandchildren...who will still be paying for it, if we don’t mobilize, vote “AGAINST” and kill it once again.

—Lt. Colonel (Retired-Army) André Dean