Welcome to the Taxpayer Protest...

Perhaps you have been to a recent Supervisor meeting or just received a flyer and wondered what is all the fuss about?  Reading through the last several articles will bring you up to speed; however, the Taxpayer wanted to place online a resolution that has been read in a few places around the County and probably needs to be heard by a larger audience.  Feel free to send it to your neighbor. 

In this resolution, you will find wisdom from voices of the past, applicable to today's challenges.  Then, the Taxpayer resolves that wisdom with a dozen or so recommendations for the Board of Supervisor's to follow. 

The essence of the issue with the proposed Comprehensive Plan is that too much power is being given away by our local elected officials to unelected bureaucrats at the local, state, and federal level.  This is not the original intent of our Constitutionally-limited Republic and the Taxpayer has grave concerns moving forward in this direction for our generation and the next.

You asked for it and it is here for your use.  Here is the 2012 Resolution of the Taxpayer...

Statement to Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors and Administration
January 2012

Whereas President Ronald Wilson Reagan stated “We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free."

Whereas philosopher Voltaire stated that “All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws."

Whereas economist Friedrich von Hayek stated "Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately coordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand."

Whereas President Thomas Jefferson stated "A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."

Whereas philosopher Cicero stated that “The men who administer public affairs must first of all see that everyone holds onto what is his, and that private men are never deprived of their goods by public men.”

Whereas Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis stated that “The makers of our constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness... They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of the rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”

Whereas philosopher John Locke stated that “Government has no other end than the preservation of property.”

Whereas physicist Albert Einstein stated that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Whereas economist Milton Friedman stated “The world runs on individuals pursuing their self-interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”

Whereas philosopher Karl Marx stated “For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.”

Whereas statesman Henry Clay stated "Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people."

Whereas Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis stated “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Therefore be it resolved, that concern citizens assembled here today present a formal redress of grievances based upon our natural rights given by God, our ancestral heritage as a free people, and our duty to preserve freedom for the future generations.

Be it further resolved that we present 25 pages of review comments of the comprehensive plan from us into your care and have the following general recommendations to guide your decision as we feverently recommend remanding this plan back to the planning commission with additional instructions to address our review comments:

The Board of Supervisors should direct the planning department to change the comprehensive plan document to:

1.     Focus mostly on public facilities, utilities, and rights of way. The plan should simply state where the county will invest the taxpayers’ resources and leave the rest to the free market.

2.     Track private property rights infringements with county performance standards to keep our citizens’ property rights fully intact.

3.     Establish a resolution process and remove the action matrix. Each resolution should contain a single action to be vetted by the Board and the public. Each action should have a timeframe, cost, scope, advantages, disadvantages, and private property impact statement

4.     Establish audit controls related to each comprehensive plan resolution adopted to maintain accountability to the elected leadership.

5.     Reorder the elements to focus on public infrastructure first and private property matters last.

6.     Explain each recommendation using specific examples to remove vague language or eliminate the recommendation.

7.     Identify regulations to eliminate that are impediments to economic growth.

8.     Remove superfluous public awareness campaigns for unelected bureaucratic fiefdom building.

9.     Maintain local control of the county administration and influence state and federal policy where they take too much control away. Our local elected officials are the most important part of federalism working. The structure of power needs to be with the elected representatives, not unelected technocrats.

10. Place risk solely in the private sector, not on the taxpayer. The county administration and our elected officials should not pick winners and losers.

11. Identify and address any constraints to growth in the vision statement.

12. Update the comprehensive plan every decade or two, not every five years. This process is expensive and redundant.

If you have any questions regarding the comment review, we will leave our contact information. Thank you for your attention tonight. We are counting on you as our elected official to protect our life, liberty and property. We will be following these issues and your actions closely.