I can only guess why the referendum didn’t pass. One
guess would be that the citizens of Winona are tired of levies
and referendums.
It seems like every time we turn around there is a new levy
or referendum that people want to pass. Ultimately it’s the tax payers
who
are paying for this referendum or levy. We are tired of
paying. My daughter told at the beginning of the school year that one of her
teacher
had to go and buy supplies that she felt were needed for her
class but there were not enough funds for these items. That’s sad!
We have become more concerned with promoting Winona that we’ve
forgotten to do the up keep of Winona.
We have a wonderful College system with a variety of your
choice which College to attend. Don’t people realize schooling starts at
the
K-12 grades? If we keep taking away from these grades we
have no good educational system to teach our future.
I was talking to a couple for Red Wing a few weeks ago that
had come to Winona on the train to tour our fair city
during the day and then
take the train home that evening. They had a brochure of Winona that
promoted the downtown area and all of it’s antiques and shops
downtown. They were very disappointed with the whole trip!
The stores were either not open or had gone out of business.
They said they went to the mall and were not impressed
either. I’ve heard many comment like this from other people in the
surrounding area also. They all seem to have the same
remarks.
I’ve read through all of the different comments on the
“Now What?” messages and I am very surprised with a lot of the
comments to each
other. I also have read through the rules of posting
messages before posting this message myself. I know I can not talk about a
individual,
or be antagonistic, sarcastic or argumentative. These are
all very good rules to have in a forum such as this. I would like to know why
a certain City Counsel member or City Planner then violated
rules number 4 and 5? I did not realize that there are those that seem to
feel they are above everyone else.
When you have a retired person who doesn’t have any
children in school any longer, or doesn’t care about new roads being
built, or lakes that
should or shouldn’t keep them warm over the winter for
the ducks to stay around, you will most definitely always get a NO vote on any
levy or referendum that is brought forth to be voted on. I
don’t always understand these ideas but they do need to be address in a
different
way to these people so they will better understand the
importance of a levy or referendum. All these people are looking at is a small limited
retirement income that they have to live on. They know they
can not afford to have their property taxes raised at the whim of a few people
who don’t live in their shoes and don’t
understand the hard times they are going through just to make ends meet.
How can we in lower costs or increase these incomes?
Marie Rossin
