I am interested by the juxtaposition of two stories during this blizzard. First, Sussex County has a budget surplus!
County officials plan to issue more than $100,000 in grants to local law enforcement agencies due to an unexpected budget surplus. According to County Administrator David Baker, $5,000 will be awarded to each municipality in Sussex County with a police force. The $105,000 total is still a 20 percent reduction from previous years, he said. […]
The County Council reduced several areas of its budget to make up for the estimated $8 million shortfall in fiscal year 2009. As a result, the county ended the year with a $1.9 million deficit, its third in as many years. But according to the mid-year budget report for 2010, the county is now in better shape. Since the beginning of the fiscal year, it has generated a $550,000 surplus.
I am very pleased that Sussex County is looking to restore surplus funding to areas it cut, like funding to local municipalities, rather than go the idiotic and typical Republican route of taking a surplus and giving it in tax cuts to the rich.
Second, despite the surplus, the county still made the appeal for volunteer farmers to use their own equipment to plow county roads, without any compensation from the county, I suppose.
Now, three cheers to Sussex County farmers for saving the day down south. And we should all take civic pride in that. But I find something here that is very interesting. Did we just not witness a form of socialism? Yeah, it was an appeal for volunteers but not an order from the government, but it was kind of an implied blackmail on the county’s part, since if the farmers did not volunteer and do the work themselves it would have been a race to see if the county ever got to the plowing before the snow melted in spring. It was sort of like saying “do it yourself or it will not be done at all.” And the farmers volunteered without compensation! That is surely not the free market capitalism. And if it is not capitalism….. then….
Chew on that, Sussex County conservatives.