STATION EDITORIAL
Posted March 22, 2021
This is a station editorial, I'm Randal J. Miller, station president.
I want to share my views on a couple of referendum questions that will be on the Christian County election ballot on April 6th.
One of those questions is asking Taylorville School District voters, to change the way they elect school board members. Right now, no more than 3 members can be elected from one township, thus ensuring that rural residents of the district have a say in school board decisions.
The ballot proposition is to ask Taylorville School District voters to allow school board members to be elected at-large, with no regard to what township they're from.
We oppose this ballot initiative as we believe it takes away rural residents' say in school board decisions. Taylorville Township has the most voters in the district, and it's very possible that, if this ballot question passes, future Taylorville School Boards could be made up of strictly Taylorville Township residents.
We join the Christian County Farm Bureau in opposing this ballot initiative.
Another ballot referendum asks Christian County voters to increase the county sales tax by one-percent, to fund repairs to the aging correctional center. As Sheriff Bruce Kettlekamp has said on our air many times, the Christian County Jail, built in 1975, is literally crumbling and is in lack of repair. Kettlekamp wants this one-percent public safety tax, to go to fix the jail.
We lay the blame for the deplorable condition of the Christian County Jail, squarely on the Christian County Boards over the 46 years the building has been in existence. Those boards failed to keep the jail properly maintained, and even now, the board has not shown leadership in fixing the many problems the Sheriff has pointed out on our air.
The 9-1-1 dispatch center, for example, that dispatches sheriff's deputies, police and fire departments for a multi-county area, has a tarp on top of their computers so they don't short circuit and go down completely. This is inexcusable.
We sympathize with Sheriff Kettlekamp and the conditions he, his staff and inmates have to endure, but rather than increasing Christian County's sales tax, we prefer the county get aggressive in pursuing federal and state grants to do the major overhaul necessary to get the jail to acceptable standards. Every increase in the county sales tax, is an excuse for shoppers to go elsewhere to buy their goods.
That's our opinion...we welcome yours. Our e-mail address is editorial@randyradio.com.
