On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Merrill Oveson <[email protected]> wrote: > I hope they buy utopia. I'm not happy that Orem raised my taxes to pay for > their utter mismanagement of this horrible business model. > I'm of the opinion that cities need to be cities and not dabble in owning > businesses. > Bad things can happen... like if a business is struggling that business has > to make changes, one of which is go out of business. > Now if a city owns a business and the business can't make it, the city > raises taxes - which is exactly what Orem did - and that costs me money. > - and that makes me poor and angry - especially I'm having to pay for > something that I don't even want much less use.
Wow, talk about misinformed. Mis-management possibly. Horrible business model, an exaggeration. Cities do not own Utopia, they lend money to Utopia on a bond, that Utopia has to pay back over a long time. Some cities have chosen to join into the Utopia network for reasons of improving network infrastructure. This infrastructure is meant to increase competition, increase availability, increase speeds, etc. This is exactly the purpose of local government, to provide infrastructure to the people (Police, schools, roads, water, sewer, etc). Now we can argue about the specific details and implementations that need improvement. But the motivation of your local government was good, and the model they chose (Utopia) can work (or could have) and was less expensive and intrusive than running it all themselves, absorbing all costs, and probably screwing up even worse. And your comment about not paying taxes for something you don't use is just plain silly. Everyone pays taxes for things they don't use. I don't have any kids, but I pay for the school system. Some people don't drive cars, yet their taxes pay for the dept of motor vehicles. This kind of infrastructure is beneficial to society in general, that's what local government and taxes are for. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
