Lori Sturdevant’s article of Feb. 8, concerning the desire of many cities and counties in Minnesota to have a &uot; local option sales tax&uot; hit home for many of us in Albert Lea. This is the third year we will be forced beg the legislature for the right to vote for a local option sales tax. In the last two years almost 40 cities have begged the legislature for the right to vote for a &uot;local option sales tax.&uot; Only one city was awarded this privilege.

The Shell Rock River Watershed is a system of lakes and streams that is entirely within Freeborn County. This watershed consists of at least eight prairie lakes. One beautiful lake is in the middle of Albert Lea and another large lake is on the edge of Albert Lea. The Shell Rock River flows through these lakes and empties into the Cedar River in Iowa. Believe me, the Iowans are not too happy with the quality of water that we are sending their way.

Our community has a plan to clean up this watershed and there is consensus within Albert Lea as to how it should be done. A majority of the people in Albert Lea appear ready to vote for a &uot;local option sales tax&uot; if it were to go toward cleaning up our lakes. This same group of people stated clearly that they do not want to pay for this through higher property taxes. They could &uot;never&uot; afford to raise enough money through property taxes to fund a project of this magnitude. Our watershed clean-up project is not just a &uot;parochial&uot; issue. This is an issue of good stewardship of our natural resources that originate in Freeborn County and flow into Iowa and eventually to the Mississippi River and down to the Gulf.

I take issue with Rep. Ron Abrams statement, that those other states which have &uot;local option sales taxes&uot; tend to have &uot;one part of the state that is doing well, and the rest is hardscrabble.&uot; I’m sure he can find a state or two where this might be true, however, there are many more states where this just isn’t the case. Thirty-six of our 50 states allow the &uot;local option sales tax.&uot; All the states bordering Minnesota allow the &uot;local option sales tax.&uot; I’ve done a fair amount of traveling in Iowa and Wisconsin and I haven’t seen any areas that I would classify as &uot;hardscrabble.&uot; Albert Lea is surrounded by cities that already have this tax. They are Rochester, Winona, Mankato, New Ulm and every county and city to our south in Iowa. In every case you can tell which cities have the &uot;local option sales tax&uot; because they look spiffy and progressive. Guess who’s starting to look like &uot;hardscrabble?’

Many small towns in Greater Minnesota are slowly dying or barely holding their own. Virtually all of them are desperately looking for alternative methods of funding vital city projects. Such efforts are difficult due to shrinking resources, Federal and State mandates, and property tax levy limits imposed on us by our legislature. The way our &uot;local option tax law was written, it mandates that the legislature decide which cities will grow and prosper and which cities will not by awarding the sales tax to some and withholding it from others. It becomes a political tool. A recent case in point is awarding the request for a sales tax a couple of years ago to St. Cloud in return for their votes on an issue important to the Metro area.

This saved a house seat for a St. Cloud legislator who was in trouble with the voters. Minnesota’s all-join-hands philosophy of providing for public needs at the state level can only go so far. The trouble is, it sounds an awful lot like the philosophy of &uot;from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs&uot; which is socialism. We don’t want Rep. Abrams to have the power to decide what we can have and when. Many of the people of Albert Lea are elderly and on fixed incomes. They do not want their property taxes raised. In fact, many of our local citizens including those on fixed incomes cannot afford much more in property tax.

Albert Lea is the not-so-proud beneficiary of local government aid funds from the state that represents more than 50 percent of our municipal budget. To add insult to injury, these funds were recently cut by several hundred thousand dollars at a time when we could least afford it. Our citizens are doing everything in their power to revitalize their community and are digging deep into their pockets to do so. Watershed restoration is one project that would be so costly that all other revitalization efforts would need to be abandoned if we were to divert the necessary funds to accomplish the cleanup and restoration. Thus, the need for the local option sales tax.

The state, and Mr. Ron Abrams, would much rather hand out fishes to feed the needy rather than teaching people to fish. This makes them feel better and may satisfy their need to exercise their power on the state level, but it does not help many struggling towns to move forward. All it does is keep them from revolting against this abuse of power from the state and keeps them down on the farm. We would ask our state leaders to change this law so that we can finally start cleaning up our watershed. We are willing to do what needs to be done down here but we need the tools to get the job done.

We are tired of looking like &uot;hardscrabble,&uot; we are tired of feeling like &uot;hardscrabble&uot; and we are tired of being treated like &uot;hardscrabble.&uot; Please give us a chance.

(Karen Trow is an Albert Lea resident.)