Letter: Golfers come from all walks of life

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To the editor,

It would seem that Pat Dunn is publicly demonstrating a complete lack of English reading comprehension skills. Pat’s Sept. 12 letter to the editor stated, and I quote, “I wonder if he (George Sirois) knows how dismayed the low-income citizens in town are in knowing that some of their taxes are going toward paying for the higher-income citizens’ hobby.”

Higher-income citizens’ hobby? Surely you jest. I play golf with plumbers, electricians, bartenders, bank presidents, students (yes our high school team and others), retirees on fixed incomes, in short a broad spectrum of Naugatuck citizens and taxpayers, yes taxpayers. And most of them are far from higher-income players.

Since you seem to like employing the liberal tactic of introducing class warfare, let me remind you that if you’ve ever read a book from our wonderful library, or played tennis, attended the senior center, participated in or watched a child’s or grandchild’s soccer match I guess I can safely say that I am supporting your taxpayer-funded “hobbies.”

What a ridiculous and pathetic attempt to try to justify a supposed $60,000 “cost” to support Hop Brook, yet you don’t even sneeze at spending $1.2 million, yes, million, per year to support and maintain our many service and sports venues.

I made it very clear in my letter, as did Sharon Hebb in her wonderful letter, that absolutely no revenue is collected by the town for the use of these sport and service facilities. All citizens can use these facilities at no cost. We “rich, elite” hobbyists, however pay a fee for each time we play golf. The so-called deficit you complain about, $60,000, represents less than .0000527 percent of the proposed total budget of $113.8 million. That doesn’t even qualify as a rounding error, at best. Time to wake up and smell the roses. $1.2 million, on the other hand, is a fairly substantial part of the budget. All of these facts were in my letter, Ray Lennon’s recent letter and in Sharon Hebb’s letter. My figures come directly from a copy of the town budget. So obviously your reading comprehension skills are seriously lacking and require immediate attention.

Since you are so adamantly in favor of voting, why don’t we put it to a vote to close the library, or the senior center or the soccer fields or youth services? Their total cost is far, far greater than the Hop Brook “cost.” Better still, let’s charge a fee for every time one of these services is used by our citizens. Ah, all of a sudden I’ll bet your reading comprehension skills just improved tremendously.

In summary, let me be very clear. I do not advocate closing or charging for the above services, or putting them to a vote. I was merely pointing out the absurdity of Pat’s position. Sports, libraries, youth services, senior centers are all gladly supported with our taxes and I do not begrudge their use for free. But I do get my dander up when someone dredges up trash like “higher-income hobbyists” and attempts to pit one group of citizens against another. This is liberalism at its worst. Look where it has gotten us in recent years — gays against straights, blacks against whites, old versus young, rich versus poor, and on and on ad nauseam.

We are all proud citizens and taxpayers of the wonderful Borough of Naugatuck. So please stop tilting at windmills and get serious about identifying and solving our real, not imagined, budget problems.

George Sirois

Naugatuck