Notes on the Moorpark city survey
By Brent E. McCoy thereal@roadrunner.com

There was an article in the Aug. 10 Moorpark Acorn that told us of a proposal to have an independent market and public opinion company survey the city residents. The goal of this survey seems to be to find out what we citizens want and how much we are willing to pay for it.

Although I've always held the opinion that the citizens of Moorpark are a cut above citizens of other cities, I think that most of us, as taxpaying Americans, would want what most taxpaying Americans want. We want it all, and we don't want to pay for it.

However, the city seems intent on letting us have only what we can and will pay for. This is just not right. It's not the way it's done.

It's time our elected officials stood up and learned a lesson from our big brothers and sisters in the larger cities of our land. There is absolutely no way that we can have everything that we want if we have to pay for it.

This type of thinking doesn't stop the federal government. Paying for only what you can afford doesn't seem to deter the state government. Many cities in this land are living high on the hog without the silly "We can only have what we can afford" mentality. They know that when the time comes, they can deal with it.

If we put our minds to it, we can have all of the things mentioned in the article. We can have a new library, the best public swimming pool in the area, a new gymnasium and allweather airconditioned reclining theater seats at the high school baseball field. Okay, that last one wasn't really mentioned in the article, but it's worth thinking about. We can have all of these things and more.

If you look around our town you will see that we have the one fiscal resource that can fund all of these things, and we won't have to pay hardly anything.

Look around. They're everywhere. We've got kids all over the place. Remember, kids grow up to be working, taxpaying grownups. How are they ever going to learn financial responsibility if we don't join the federal and state governments in saddling them with an increased tax burden for the rest of their working lives?

I fear that this plea will fall on the deaf ears of Mayor Hunter and the "Sound Fiscal Management" gang in our city government. In this age, the idea of a survey to determine the needs and wishes of the population is just downright un-American.

What would happen if word of this got out? This "spending only what you can afford" silliness. Banks would be ruined. There would be rioting in the streets of Washington and Sacramento. When times get bad and tax revenues dwindle, teachers, first responders, health officials and public service departments all over the country would continue to be adequately funded, thus dooming these poor folks to a life of doing the same job, day after day.

No, it's just not right! Everyone else gets what they want. Why can't we?

With this kind of spending only what you can afford thinking, it's pretty obvious that not everyone is going to get what they deserve. Except for, maybe, our kids.