It is indeed a very sad day when a few malcontents rob the residents of Fruita of the benefits of an awesome asset — a community/recreation center. By spreading misinformation, these few folks have undermined Fruita’s well-thought-out plan to meet the needs of citizens of all ages.

In a fall survey, 70 percent of respondents supported a sales and use tax increase for a community recreation center in Fruita, more when including a new library. This is what was presented to the voters in the April 1 election.

In the weeks before the election, residents were bombarded with negative campaigning with erroneous allegations and poorly calculated but scary figures. And this was done apparently without following campaign laws requiring visibility of who was paying for this campaign activity.

One piece asked, “Can you afford higher property taxes?” Hmm, the measure was for a 1 percent sales and use tax, not property tax, and excluded it groceries. That meant everyone shopping in Fruita would contribute to the revenue stream.

Another allegation: The rec center would cost every Fruita resident $4,000 to build. That would mean that each individual would have to spend $400,000 in Fruita, excluding groceries. Do you plan on spending that much any time soon — for each member of your family?

Then there was the “Are you ready for a 35 percent tax increase” (cited elsewhere as 33 percent). Again, wrong! The total sales tax that people in Fruita pay — 6.9 percent — was going to increase to 7.9 percent. Get out your calculators. That’s just a 14.5 percent increase, 1 cent on every dollar.

Also cited was the so-called competition with a local business. We checked with several other communities with newer rec centers, confirming that public rec centers serve a different clientele than private fitness clubs and that no private facilities had closed in Golden, Aspen, or Durango, as alleged.

Now this handful of folks who have spread this misinformation get to live with the fact that they are responsible for robbing Fruita of this opportunity.

MARY NEEDHAM
Fruita

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 10:28 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.