> SOUTHERN INDIANA — An unfair shake on sewer bills



On Aug. 8, Braden Lammers’ article “Out-of-towners charged more for water” appeared in both The Tribune and Evening News. The conflict described is real, but several issues need to be addressed.

The title, itself, and some of the content, mention an increase in the water bill of the out-of-towners. The reality is that we pay Silver Creek Water for our water — all of it. Those bills increase only if we use more water.

Sellersburg Water and Sewer Departments bill us for supposedly only sewer usage, and it is these bills that recently increased. Since any water used for irrigation does not enter the sewer system, increasing the sewer bills of only those who irrigate is inequitable.

Brian Meyer, town council president, and Ken Alexander, municipal works director, indicate that this increase “ ... covers all residents outside of the town’s limits that are on the sewer system ...”

That is inaccurate. The increase applies only to a subset of that universe: Namely those who choose to irrigate and do not have a separate meter for water used for irrigation.

Meyer further implies that Sellersburg residents have funded all the infrastructure outside the town. If that is true, what have we been paying for each month with our sewer checks?

Alexander supposedly said the growth for the sewer system has been outside the town limits, so they decided to “have residents being served by the town to cover the remaining debt on the bond payment.”

The illogic of this statement is stunning: Before allowing the growth areas to be hooked up to the sewer system, the town council should have determined the costs and how to cover them, e.g., by requiring the developers to underwrite the additional costs to be incurred. It would seem that wasn’t done.

What Sellersburg has is a financial problem, seemingly stemming from poor fiscal management that is to be solved, in part, by an unrepresented few. Consider that those living outside the town limits have no path of appeal for these types of decisions.

There is no governing body of the council to which to turn, and we cannot vote council members into or out of office. It is close to taxation without representation, which some 235 years ago caused 13 colonies to revolt.

— Betty Unruh, Sellersburg



Reader: Attack ad is a sham



The Aug. 20 issue of the Courier-Journal features a front page article reporting on the Democratic Party TV commercial attacking Republican congressional candidate Todd Young for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” The commercial asserts that this comment implies Young would not “protect” Social Security, but instead might try to end it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This comment reveals that Young recognizes the casual manner in which Social Security has been treated by Congress, and the need to take steps to protect it — real, effective steps, not the fraudulent PAYGO façade of which Baron Hill boasted in his letter published in these pages earlier this month.  

This Democratic Congress has regularly and routinely side-stepped PAYGO requirements simply by declaring the desired expenditure as an “emergency.”  Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted by this Congress on payoffs to unions, trial lawyers and other Democratic bases falsely characterized as “emergencies.”  And those very wasted dollars include every last one of those dollars paid into Social Security by citizens intending to set aside funds for their future retirement.

Todd Young’s “Ponzi scheme” comment was a frank recognition of reality. As the Courier-Journal article itself explained, a  Ponzi scheme is “a scam in which investments from new participants are used to pay returns to previous investors while the organization never creates any real profit.”

That is a precise, on-target description of Social Security, in which the payments to retirees and other beneficiaries come entirely from current Social Security and income taxes and from money borrowed from our children and grandchildren and added to the exploding federal deficit.

Originally, there was an actual Social Security Trust Fund. FICA taxes went into it and retirement and benefit payments came out of it. Congress, greedy for additional funds to spend and spread around, raided it for other expenditures and terminated it. FICA tax payments now just go into the general pot which Congress spends and distributes at its whim. Not one single dollar is set aside and earmarked for the future benefit of any of us.

So, the fact is, Todd Young’s “Ponzi scheme” comment is precisely correct. And Todd Young’s suggestion for the so-called “privatization” of Social Security, in which your FICA payments or a portion of them would go into a separate, unique and segregated account set aside just for your future needs, is a better deal for us by far than the current situation. You, yourself, would control the funds you had set aside; Baron Hill and his cohorts would not be able to scramble your retirement nest egg any longer.

— Thomas W. Sinex, Sellersburg