Douglas County Commission Chairman Tom Worthan said on August 1, 2006 concerning the operation of the Aquatic Center, "Another expenditure that this Board inherited was the cost of maintaining and operating the Aquatic Center that was built with SPLOST money. You can build these capitol projects with SPLOST dollars but you have to maintain and operate those projects with general fund dollars." (Can you say YMCA). Our property taxes went up because of the SPLOST.

The original budget for the Aquatics Center was $3,763,623 at the time the SPLOST was passed. The budget soon ballooned to 2.5 times that to $8,297,857. This is obviously gross mismanagement of our tax dollars and now they are coming to us again for hundreds of millions of dollars more. Now on this SPLOST is an equestrian and dog park to be located at Boundary Waters for several million dollars. This piece of pork, the "dog and pony park", panders to a handful of residents who "requested" this "dog and pony park" from the commissioners. How much more special interest spending of our tax dollars are we going to tolerate?

The coming projects like the "dog and pony park" that will cost approximately $3,000,000, the YMCA fiasco at a minimum of $17,000,000, the Bright Star Park for $10,000,000, and several other projects for many millions more, have been devised simply as ways to get the jail money passed. It is just fluff, very expensive fluff, to cloak the main purpose of the SPLOST in the first place. They should not be on the ballot and have no business even being considered by our government leaders. In this day and time when all of us are tightening our belts on a very skinny allowance it is an outrage to have such unrestrained spending taking place simply as a political ploy to get the jail passed.

On September 18th please show up to vote intelligently and let's not allow our government officials to manipulate us like so many sheep to the tax slaughter.