Jerry Williams and Mayor Ardell Brede have appealed to the legislators to bring the added Rochester sales ta up for a vote. Voting and democracy go hand-in-hand.
As an outsider (I live in Zumbrota), I would request another option: Allow the non-resident shoppers to vote on these Rochester "must-have" projects, too. There very likely are just as many non-resident shoppers who pay the extra sales tax. Case in point: Check the number of Iowa cars in mall parking lots on Sundays.
A second option would be to skip the extra sales tax for non-resident shoppers. Scanners could be programmed to read our driver's licenses to determine our residence and delete the extra tax. Then your sales tax would be a truly fair one — a tax on the residents, for the residents.
Remember: The Boston Tea Party was a protest against "taxation without representation."
Don Buck
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Zumbrota
