Letter to the Editor

Hutchinson finds fault with local leadership

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

In my humble opinion our quorum court has to be the dumbest bunch of people since the Blytheville City Council. Baptist Health Care was going to build a new hospital for the county but our quorum court was too smart to let that happen; Baptist left town and taxpayer dollars have been poured down that rat hole for a while. Why don't they just issue a statement with one figure totaling all of the tax dollars that have been spent on the hospital system since Baptist left town?

The "Industrial Development Fund" has been going for years and an accounting of the funds going there are always too secret for the taxpayer to see. Something that is clear to see is that the taxpayers of Mississippi County are getting stuck with the bill on this and many, if not most, of the employees of the steel related industries live out of county and out of state. If this had been set up as a payroll tax the affected people would be the ones paying the tax but, hey, the smartest people in the room made that decision. At one time, Maverick/Tenaris was the largest employer in Kennett, Mo., where the sales tax is about 6.475%. In Blytheville, everyone is painfully aware of the 10.25% sales tax but, hey, the smartest people in the room made another decision.

The "Industrial Development fund" has a strange little habit that has been noticeable over the last few years, every time it looks as if one of the "investments" has failed or is about to, all of a sudden the announcement of a new "double secret project" promising hundreds of jobs, (the last time I believe it was about a thousand jobs). The activity at the base looks as if the last "investment" is in danger of providing no jobs, there sure aren't many planes (or cars) around the ART facility.

Another little project that is "Blytheville happening" is the overpass on Ash St. So many of the steel workers live in Jonesboro that a faster thoroughfare is needed to get our potential tax dollars out of town. As the population shrinks with workers moving out of town, Blytheville is beginning to resemble Detroit or Gary, Ind., with all of the deserted houses falling down. Of course, the overpass will make that trip faster but after working a 12 hour shift in the steel industry one doesn't want to stop in Blytheville.

Then comes the damage that the Blytheville city council has done and is doing. "Do the right thing and raise taxes to pay the IRS" was the mantra of one of the councilmen. The only reason the IRS hasn't responded is they are probably too busy laughing at the stupidity that got Blytheville in this mess. Any intermediate accounting student would have spotted this debacle coming a mile away. Instead, our city council votes to give the mayor retirement after 10 years. Have they voted themselves retirement after 10 years also? If the state Attorney General wasn't so busy running for Governor maybe we could get him to look into this mess. And, speaking of messes, the walking disaster who used to be mayor looks as if he is cooking up another surprise, browning one of the the board members and holding illegal meetings.

If the golf course is generating so much money why is there a monthly column in the Blytheville Courier showing the income versus expenditures? In fact, why don't we include the spending of the Industrial Development fund in the same report. Another interesting fact would be the number of new building permits issued. The last item I would like to see included is the number of murders in Blytheville year to date. If anyone has taken the time to Google the Blytheville crime rate they will know this is one scary set of numbers.

All of these things are important to a town that is in serious decline and are important to anyone that is trying to turn things around. Our trouble right now, in my opinion, is that our politicians have IQs that closely resemble their shoe sizes (and they obviously don't have big feet). If these people (both the quorum court and city council) are serious about about "serving the people" they should either resign or get serious about cutting spending and getting competitive. Right now the county jail issue is a prime indicator of how dumb these people are, trouble is many of them should be on the other side of the walls.

Johnny Hutchinson

Blytheville