Years before we came to Rockdale to live, we read the tales of the not quite ready for prime time Atlanta highway system. At times the late Lewis Grizzard poked fun at the highway system in his nationally syndicated column. To tell you the truth, we thought that most of what we read was just part of a comedian's fodder.

That is until we moved here and have experienced the mess that is the Atlanta highway system.

The lack of advanced planning for this system - failing to take into account the area's potential growth is truly almost sinful.

That is why we should be jumping with joy on the prospect of only paying one more cent on our local sales tax so that over the next 10 years we will see our highway system improved.

We should be, but sadly we're not. We just can't fathom giving one more public entity the opportunity to take more money out of our pocketbooks in order to fix something that we have already paid plenty of taxes for, believing it would be built correctly the first time.

After hearing the pros and cons on why passing this tax on ourselves would be necessary for the good of the tax payers of our county, we still don't want to pay more taxes and we still will have transportation needs here that won't be addressed.

In spite of the tax, we have come to conclusion if we don't pass this bill and if the people who presented all the pros are right, whatever mess we have now will only get worse and to try to fix our problems in the future will only cost us more than we can ever imagine.

So we recommend that you go to the polls on July 31, vote yes on the T-Splost bill, but don't be ashamed to hold your nose firmly as you do it.