Hey, Eudora, wake up. What are you going to do with the heavy traffic to Kansas Highway 10 through your downtown? Is there anywhere in Leavenworth County that you can’t get to now? Who said we needed this entrance/exit?

The one-cent sales tax is to fix roads and bridges. We have all over ditches for water to control flooding and keep the rock on the road, not in the ditch. To have gravel and oil and chat roads, not mud roads. Bridges that are safe and not outdated and unsafe. We can’t even get that done (no money). We need to improve what we have all over, not just on a road to nowhere. The sales tax hasn’t even been collected yet, and commissioners want to spend three times what they think will come — an expense we don’t need. Or is this something they want to put their names on, at our expense? In Tonganoxie, the city issued 111 building permits in 2003, 86 in 2004 and 128 in 2005. That equals 325 new roofs. With about $2,000 each, that would be about $650,000 of extra income. Why haven’t our taxes gone down? Why isn’t the school paying part of the water tower with that extra tax?

We all drive the short distance to 24-40 Highway. It is there, and safe and only 20 miles to Kansas City and it is paid for already by your taxes. There is a lot of undeveloped ground along 24-40 Highway. This move to bring all that ground into the city would divide the city at taxpayers’ expense. We would need more police, sheriff, firefighters, city services, EMS. Do they have a price on all that, too?

Do the taxpayers in northern Leavenworth County know they will go without if this happens? We live here to know our kids are safe, hear the birds, watch trees sway, smell the fresh air, and not to worry.

A trip to Washington, D.C. — why, who is paying for it? Why are city officials going — at taxpayers’ expense. Can we go, to say we don’t need this?

Don’t give county commissioners a blank check.

Bill Jones,

Rural Tonganoxie.