Dear Editor,

I was shocked to find out that someone had filed an objection to petitions, where 603 people had signed on asking that the Flagg-Rochelle Park District’s $14 million rec center tax funding proposed only be approved by voters. 

I guess I shouldn’t have been – the objector shares the same last name as the Flagg-Rochelle Park District executive director who is supporting this expensive and unaffordable plan.

Think about this for a minute —  $14 million — and the park district wants you to press the “I Believe” button? 

The effort to provide information aside, the $14 million cost doesn’t include the operating expenses for the facility, which by the park district’s own numbers for expected memberships (presented previously when this concept was being floated out in the Rochelle News-Leader late last year) wouldn’t even pay the ongoing bills of the facility. That would also go on your taxes. 

Now we have added a pool.  Add in electricity for filtration, gas for heating, water, and chemicals – this will be one expensive operation to maintain.  And we’ll all pay for it.

That someone with the same last name as the Flagg-Rochelle Park District executive director should have filed this challenge is disappointing. 

Perhaps they want to make sure that the senior citizens, living in the home they earned after years of hard work on a fixed income, won’t be able to afford to live there anymore after this tax increase?  

Maybe they want those who are barely hanging on to their home after the housing market collapsed to have to make the choice between paying their taxes on this $14 million project, and putting food on the table for their family? 

Surely there must be some logical reason for this attempt to stop this from being decided by the voters. I can’t come up with one. Can you?

In the spirit of our community, I call on the objector to remove his objection as it is a clear conflict of interest. Let the people vote on this, and be wise enough to accept the results.

I call on the taxpayers of the Flagg-Rochelle Park District to make your voices heard. The board members’ e-mail addresses are in the Rochelle News-Leader. Write them a letter and demand this $14 million proposed only be allowed to be decided by residents in a referendum vote.

Or, as Thomas Jefferson once said, “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

George Wilhelmsen

Rochelle