Dear Sirs: The SPLOST contains some good projects, but few that benefit a significant number of Newton County residents. It is unfortunate that it contains personal projects of interest to few in the community except for individual commissioners and a handful of their constituents.

SPLOST will also be used to purchase items that do not have long-term value and are typically bought by most jurisdictions as routine annual purchases from the general budget, such as patrol cars and maintenance equipment.

SPLOST is intended for what the name implies, "special purpose" uses.

Commissioners have proposed to use SPLOST to pay off debt.That sounds good, but think about how the money saved will be used. It won’t be to cut taxes.

There is a reason these routine items and previous debt service are being pushed off onto the SPLOST.

It frees up general budget money for the commissioners to spend as they see fit, with little (if any) oversight.

This basically is like giving a whole piggy-bank full of money to your kids and then turning them loose at Toys R Us during a storewide sale.

Don’t forget that this is the same group of people, except for one newcomer, who passed a "rollback" last year that was really a significant tax increase. A rollback is when Walmart or Target cuts prices.

We don’t need to further the cause of deception, and we need to remember the "rollback" in next year’s elections.

Please vote "No" and stop the 2011 SPLOST.