TAXES: Imports should pay

I wanted to share with Stephanie Gossard from Athol and thank her for a very good letter. I wish I had written it before she did.

Why do senior citizens have to pick up the tab for people who are moving here and buying homes? They move here, oh it’s really great. They can buy a home in the Inland Northwest. Lower property taxes. Cheap-cheap homes. But what is missing? Oh, my child can’t go to a school, because the school doesn’t exist yet.

I have a solution. If you are going to move here from California, Texas or Arizona, before you buy property, you should be asked to fill out a questionnaire. Do you have children? Do you have grandchildren? If you do, you should be asked to put a $50,000 down-payment on the property before you are allowed to move to here. This $50,000 will support the schools in the area. This way, when school districts decide to build another school, the people who have just moved here will have had to pay for it. Not just those of us who have lived here. Not my husband and I, who never had children or grandchildren. Why should we crank out money every year to educate other people’s children?

We are tired of sending in money every year to educate the children of bums who will grow up to drive trucks or move away to other states. This is not right. I worked as a substitute teacher for school district 271. They paid me as much as a person who works for Walmart or the Dollar Tree. To my way of thinking, they owe me money. I did charity work, working for them for more than a year. I had a bachelor’s degree. They treated me like dirt. They gave me no benefits. Now everyone wants to give the school district money? I resent paying them this tax money, and I think so should everyone else.

BETSY ROSENBERG

Rathdrum