Courageous act

To the editor:

I admire the board’s courage, displayed this week when they began their preliminary budget cuts, with more to follow. What a shame we must put the ax to programs like WRAP, which are helping staff make progress with the most fragile of our youth. Those who want “smaller government” through tax cuts will be, no doubt, surprised when at-risk kids turn into at-risk adults, who will put even more strain on social services, perhaps for a lifetime.

Sadly, without a substantial injection of new money either this year, or in the coming years, almost every superintendent in Kansas will be forced to recommend cutting budgets, staff and needed services to children for the rest of his/her career. If you like what’s happening now, you’ll like the next few years even better. The cuts will continue in schools, prisons, social services, care to the weak, the ill and the elderly.

Don’t want to see that scenario develop? Write your representatives and ask them to raise taxes: sales, income, property, tobacco, etc. Try as you may, there is no other solution short of continued cuts for years to come. Despite some of the rhetoric, many legislators are more afraid of expulsion from office than they are of raising taxes.

Paul R. Getto,

Topeka