Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Farmland too valuable to go to highest bidder
Wednesday, July 19, 2006


I respond to Dianne Bradford?’s July 6 letter in which she said her farm is just like stock to her. When you want to retire, just sell it to developers at the highest price you can get. Give no thought to the neighbors, the environment or anything else that gets in your way.

I thought we were supposed to be stewards of the land and care for it. If everyone thought as Bradford does, there soon would be no countryside, and we would be importing our food. That would give any enemy the upper hand, wouldn?’t it?

I have seen a sign painted on a barn on Rt. 16 that says, ''Every day is Earth Day to a farmer.'' I want to add, ''until the price is right.'' Greed is fast taking over the thinking in this country.

Is the dollar the new God? Is everyone to be judged by what is in his wallet instead of what?’s in his heart? Big houses, big cars, kids overscheduled and put in day care at infancy, just to make that dollar ?– doesn?’t sound inviting to me.

I agree that there should be more money in the land trust. Perhaps we could cut some of the pork in the state budget and direct the money to the land trust. Then Bradford and her ilk can get top dollar out of their ''investment,'' and someone who really loves the land could have it.

SHERRY FRAZIER

Croton

Ask these people

I am sure if you asked the trustees, the township director, the city/township mayor and his representative to the ''cooperation committee'' you might see if there is an amen in this burg.

I Had to Laugh

I saw this in the paper and I had to laugh!! Let me see if I have this right, this community won't raise its own taxes to teach children to read but you want to raise taxes to buy farmland. Giving our kids the best start we can as an investment in our own futures has lower value to the community than taking land out of taxable service. Things are more important than people.

I take it most of you are several generations divorced from farming. Farming is first, last and always a business. No one complains when a restaurant owner or small business owner wants to sell to retire, why is farming any different? It's a life only a very few would voluntarily choose. I grew up on a farm and I hated the endless, repetitious toil so much I did what boys have done for 5000 years. I joined the army! It was far better in my mind to get paid to kill people and break things than slop hogs or hoe beans or fix fence or milk cows or any one of 10,000 other back-breaking, unpaid jobs.

In the orginal draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson stated ''life, liberty and the pursuit of property.'' That was changed to pursuit of happiness and if it pleases me to sell to the highest bidder, why is it any of your business?

By Any Mouse

One Amen

Any Mouse

What make those farms in the area valuable? If they were in some remote area of the state they wouldn't bring in more than a few thousand dollars per acre.

The fact is the tax payers have already made those farm valuable by spending their hard earned money to build schools, roads and other infrastructure. It seems that part of their new found wealth should belong to the community that created that wealth. Granted there is law either moral or written that requires them to do so but out of purely humanitarian reasons they do have a debt to the community. IS donating a 25 area tract of land too much to ask of a farmer selling his 200 acre farm to cash in. In many cases the barns are falling down and the house is not much better. House rich cash poor.

It is refreshing to see someone like Bill Gates earn all of those dollars in America and then send it to Africa. What a guy.


Amen