Bring Taxes Under Control

To the Editor:

In response to Ms Taylor’s letter of May 8 to The Bee, I acknowledge the fact that the next generation will have to pay for our Social Security although I do not agree that they should have to. I think your son should be able to keep his small amount of money he will be making over the summer. Whoever voted for the incompetent government to watch over our retirement money so many years ago must have been hallucinating. They would be the last people that I would have wanted to watch my retirement fund and for good reason. Since that time, they have taken billions out of that fund for “other purposes.” What other purposes, they never seem to want to explain to the American public, although I’ve read stories of prisoners collecting SSI because they are not able to work, alcoholics and drug addicts collecting while in rehab because they are not able to work, and I personally know a few people who are collecting and I haven’t quite figured out why because they seem pretty healthy to me. The government does acknowledge, however, that they need to “repay” the Social Security fund the $75 billion or so (I’m not positive on that figure but it’s been in print a few times and I know it to be in the billions) that they’ve “borrowed” from it for “other purposes.”

I am not against paying any taxes, I am against taxes increasing year after year and I am against the people in this town that are pulling down the six-figure salaries that want to slam the rest of us because they can afford it. A lot of us cannot. Yes, Mr Caffrey, I can move out, and I probably will someday, because I won’t be able to afford to stay here. My husband and I have been here since 1981. But some people come and go. They come here and buy homes and then move to lower Fairfield County after a few years, after jacking up the prices a little more. And yes, Mr Caffrey, someone paid for my meager education back in the 1960s and I can assure you when I took my cello lesson, my parents had to rent the cello and we had bake sales to pay for the activities our music club had. What is so wrong with that? Why is everything handed to these kids today on a silver platter and God forbid that it isn’t? And for the people who can’t afford the music class? Maybe some people with the higher incomes can chip in and get those kids their lessons. At least until the economy picks up … but no … there is never any alternative except to raise taxes. Burden everyone a little more. Make it more difficult to live here. Do you want to see real children in need? Work in my office for one week. I work with families with children in Waterbury. You don’t have a clue.

I grew up in Rowayton in a small two-family house. My father paid $18,000 for that house. It was recently on the market, almost untouched (which is not in very good condition), for $750,000. I do not want that to happen to this town. The people that lived in Rowayton and left can never go back. It has become a place for the megarich. When will this all end? Do you want your own children not to be able to live in this town when they enter the workforce? I wouldn’t think so. The taxes in Newtown need to be brought under control.

Kathy Pinto

5 Tanglewood Lane, Sandy Hook                                    May 14, 2003