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Hernando Today

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 18, 2008

Green Not So Green

I have a dilemma that I need the liberal global warming alarmists to help me with. If we go to "electric" cars, I foresee a conflict of interest. Do I demonstrate my "greenness" by having an electric-powered rollerskate, thereby increasing the demand of electricty, thereby increasing the amount of coal or nuclear power usage while thumbing my nose at the oil companies?

Or wait, am I even demonstrating my "greenness" at all or my political correctness? How will the poor afford electrictity if I am using up all the available electricty on the grid for my car?

But wait! There's ethanol. Oh, wait, yet another conflict of interest. Do I help to inflate the cost of food (after all if I am not vegan, meat products come from corn-consuming animals and if I am vegan, I eat corn) by using a main food source to create a small percentage of a fuel source for very little reduction in emissions?

Oh, and then there's the amount of energy, again either petroleum, coal or nuclear based, to create the ethanol. Hmmm. No matter which way I turn, I can never be totally "green." It's really distressing.

I can't even contemplate leeching power from the sun using any number of solar powered panels to solve the solution because none of us know what that impact would be. Would the sun slam into Mars thereby creating an ice age? I think I need to be in therapy.

Serena Seifried

Brooksville

Bowing Down

To Home Builders

I have been disappointed in the way this Hernando County Commission has bowed down and said "yes, master" to the home-building machine in the past, but never as much as on July 15. That was the day the commission had legally advertised a public hearing on impact fees.

On or about July 14, the builders requested more time to prepare (they had the same time as everyone else), and before the hearing even starts, one puppet on the commission has the builders pull the strings and makes a motion to delay the hearing until Aug. 5. After some pretend legal questions, the commission agrees to another hearing.

I truly feel that another hearing would be good to look at what options there are to get us headed in the right direction and actively suggest some but, in my opinion, the commission should have said no to the impact fee issues before them at this time and stated that on Aug. 5 any valid options would be discussed, including impact fees.

Instead, they decided to let the builders come up with a reason to let the commission go against logic.

If there is a person alive who believes that the builders really want to build something, too bad. All that will happen is that there will be some impact fees prepaid at a reduced rate to lower the builders' cost on construction at a much later date. One of the "Give Me" group made a statement that not everyone wanting a new home wanted one exactly like one already on the market. Guess what? There are more than 5,000 available today and more tomorrow. If they are that picky, they can pay for what they want. But I'm not sure we want them anyway because the next thing they will want is to outlaw my horse because it defecates.

Richard Ross

Brooksville

Impact Fee

Reduction? No

The reduction of the impact fee will not reduce the impact cost to each Hernando County taxpayer for a new home built in our county. A new family moving into Hernando County brings with them 1.5 children needing schools, cars needing roads, landscape needing water, additional police, emergency responders and the list goes on and on.

This new family will be paying for the day-to-day cost to run the county through their property taxes, but who pays for the required additional infrastructure needed due to the addition of one new family into our county? A new school building alone will cost more or less $16,000 for each additional student. So the impact of one new home with even one new student will be paid more by the current Hernando County taxpayers than the impact fee on that one new home.

The impact fee may scratch the surface, but just think of a county where developers are getting rich and the emergency responders need several new stations, the county government needs a new courthouse, several new schools are needed and the traffic on the roads is coming to a standstill. The current impact does not cover the cost of the entire needed additional infrastructure.

Each new home in Hernando County means every resident in the county already pays part of the impact of that one new home. Reduce the impact fee? No, I say we should calculate the real cost to the current taxpayers for each new home and increase the fee to that number.

If the impact fee to build a new home in Hernando County becomes so high that no one will ever build another home in the county, so be it. The more I consider it, Hernando County will be a fine place to live without becoming Tampa.

Guy Peeters

Brooksville

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