I am trying to understand why Cobb County and the federal government have trouble managing in hard economic times. Perhaps there is one recent clue.
Referring to the anticipated $52,000 annual cost to operate the soon-to-be-built $10 million CCT Mobility Center, Commission Chairman Tim Lee stated: “We’ll figure out when it gets built how to handle that.”
Doesn’t that sound eerily like Nancy Pelosi’s notorious statement concerning Obamacare: “We have to pass it before we find out what’s in it”? A reasonable interpretation of the Commissioner’s comment might be: “I won’t be in office, so let’s just kick that cost down the road.”
One of the reported purposes of the Mobility Center will be to offer seniors training on how to use CCT’s services. While this and some other purposes are not without merit, there is a true irony at work in Cobb.
While one group celebrates federal and Cobb tax dollars being spent at this time to build and maintain a facility to teach seniors how to ride a bus (how many will seek such training?), another group demands an end to the school tax exemption for seniors (an exemption that benefits countless seniors).
Even if the budgeting for schools and the Center are separate it amazes me that on the one hand our federal and local governments can, in the midst of a severe economic downturn, develop new ways to spend scarce resources while desperately seek additional sources of taxation.
Not to worry, I am sure it will all work out in the end just because Commissioner Lee has told us the center is “being built very green” and Commissioner Helen Goreham commented that the center is a sign that the county is pulling out of recent financial troubles. I need to buy some rose-colored glasses.
Roger Chagnon
East Cobb
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For the record, Nancy Pelosi never said that. She said, "We have to pass the bill so YOU can find out what is in it." She was complaining about the fact that the media was covering the politics of the health care legislation rather than the contents of it.