To the editor,
Here we go again.
If I understand your most recent article of Nov. 14 pertaining to the Beacon Falls wastewater treatment plant, Beacon Falls has just spent $1.7 million on a study of the plant and essentially did not come to a conclusion or recommendation. Gee, how exciting, Beacon Falls spends $1.7 million and the engineering consulting company, Woodward & Curran, comes back with a big question mark. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy doesn’t it?
Additionally, the Beacon Falls board feels that one of the main issues that needs to be figured out is the implementation of user fees for the sewer. In other words, read my lips, “higher taxes.”
I have to say I’m not surprised, but very, very disappointed that my hard-earned tax dollars are seemly pissed away for incomplete work, shoddy work (remember the Woodland High School roof?) or work that seemingly never ends.
Here’s another example of the waste that is so prevalent in Connecticut. I know the retaining walls as you enter Beacon Falls from the south after exiting Route 8 are really nice, but two years to complete, by a cast of 10 to 15 DOT members daily seems a bit much. These very nice retaining walls must have cost Connecticut taxpayers very close to what a new sewer treatment plant would cost. I’m just guessing, but if you add up the labor and material cost for this project I would bet that it would be very close to $16 million dollars. I would also suggest that a private contractor could have completed the job for about one-tenth of that in about four months.
But, that’s the Connecticut way, let’s study it, study it some more, do it over, do it expensively, figure out the taxes (they are very good at figuring out the fees/taxes), figure who or what we can tax, etc. And you know what, the majority just re-elects the same old tired politicians who dole out the same tired policies of tax-and-spend and tax-and-spend some more.
Wake up fellow taxpayers and vote for fiscal conservatives and people with some common sense, lest we end up like Detroit.
Hans Wenzel
Beacon Falls
