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by Ken Mahal, NSC President Governor Kenny you said it was in the mail and Saturday at that. How wonderful that you pulled off this nice rebate of $75. It’s too bad I didn’t spend forty grand to buy a new car and get the full amount of some $275.00 back. It was really nice to receive such a personal note along with the check. I have been thinking about how far that money goes. I know it wasn’t intended for such comparisons but most of us will do it anyway. Last year we, my wife and I, expensed $11,000+ for medical premiums and pills. I think of when you started the Nevada State prescription drug plan Senior Rx) several years back and we proposed that you consider allowing the rest of us, not just the poor, to become a part of the prescription drug plan knowing we would pay our fair share and make it a great buyers’ club. I often wonder if you ever gave that any thought since we never heard from you. I also remember us sending you our proposal to create a preventative health care program for seniors in Nevada. Everyone knows that preventative care is very productive if we keep well rather than patching us up after we became ill. I think of how many smokers whose lives we may have extended if they had quit smoking some eight years ago. The same goes for preventative health care where we proposed simple things like losing weight and shaping up physically to stay fit in our old age. I also think of you when the tobacco money was going to be sent to Nevada in the amount of some $40,000,000 a year. We suggested that that money should have been used for supplemental premiums for smokers to help subsidize their medical premiums thus saving the thousands upon thousands of non-smokers from having to pay the medical costs of smokers as a part of their premiums. As for the millennium scholarship we were not against if but felt that it should have been a part of the general funding budget and as it turns out it’s too bad that didn’t happen. Then a couple years ago we wanted you to come on board with an audit of the Clark County School District (CCSD) budget after we had reviewed the fifty-some line item budget printed by the Review Journal. We made a serious study of that budget and agreed that just in the CCSD alone we could have eliminated a couple hundred million a year so doubling that in line with the state budget would have meant almost a half billion dollars in savings making all the new taxes unnecessary to begin with. That also would have meant you would not have needed to spend the some $1.5 million on mailing out the checks either. Governor I am only wishing we had a better relationship because it seems the only ones you and most legislators think of are the poor and the school kids. Those of us who have not had a paycheck for 20 plus years are in need of things also. Just because you don’t hear much from us doesn’t mean we can’t use help. In fact at my age of 84 I still carry my registration as an architect and have a real-estate license on hold both just in case I need to go back to work. That’s really a joke isn’t it? But seriously one does think of those things even if they should be OK. That is pretty scary to even think about. I see a lot of older folks working and I’m sure many of them wouldn’t be working if they didn’t have to. We are sort of the forgotten ones who everyone, if they think about us, think we have no problems. One thing we are aware of is our cost of living is one of the highest in the United States and has been for at least the last half dozen years. We often wonder how so many low income people can make it; be married and have three jobs I guess. A TWENTY FIVE PERCENT PAY INCREASE FOR THE POLICE MEANS LESS COPS.
It was only August 2nd that I testified before the Clark County Commissioners against the proposal to authorize the ¼ cent sales tax and suggested that it wouldn’t be long before there would be trouble if the police were in charge of spending it. We just nicely get the quarter percent sales tax shoved down our throat and the sheriff agrees to the 25 % increase for the cops, which means quite a few less new cops when you take into consideration the added cost for new hires. This is exactly what we felt would happen. We already see a couple of the commissioners upset because they are losing their grip on the metropolitan police department again as we suggested would happen. It will be interesting to see how bad it is in a couple more months and who knows how bad it can be in a year at this rate. Why do we re-elect these people to the County Commission? Simple they were in on the redistricting so can hardly lose. CLARK COUNTY COMMISSIONER YVONNE ATKINSON GATES MAKES IT BIG TIME IN REAL-ESTATE.
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