BY GIL BURROGHS
Attention Voters:
A yes vote for the Parks and Recreation Facilities bond question does not mean you’ll get a gym, senior center, multiple ball fields or any
other specific park or recreation facility. Don’t take my word for it, just read the Ballot Question as it appears on the Nov. 5 Official Ballot.
The Ballot Question authorizes only two things. The first is that you will give the commissioners $15 million of your hard earned money to build any park or recreation facility that any four of the seven commissioners agree they want. They don’t have to ask what you want, just what they want. It could be a putt-putt golf course, a dill pickleball court, a horse barn, a board walk around a gold fish pond or you name it, just as long as it is a park or recreation facility.
The second thing you agree to is to allow the commissioners to raise your property tax by about 10% to pay for the $15 million they will spend on what they want and to cover the $8+ million of interest. That’s a total of $23+ million of your hard earned money and you have yet to have any say as to what specifically you’ll get. If you have $100,000 of property tax value, that will be $64.00 per year until the bond is paid off. If it’s $300,000 for 20 years that’s a total of $3,840.
What will you get with a no vote? You will send a message to the commissioners that until they put forth a bond question that contains a specific facility, like an indoor swimming pool which 70% of the respondents to a recreation department survey rated most important or important of 30 possible facilities or activities offered, there will be no blank check, nebulous bond issue that will pass. NO POOL NO BOND.
Gil Burroughs is a longtime Edenton resident.
