Voting Precincts

The Tattnall County Commissioners are considering a plan to consolidate some of the county's 15 voting precincts. The Board of Elections would like to see them consolidated into one per Commissioner district (or five). There are pros and cons on the issue but overall it looks like it will save money for the county.

Do you feel voting would be more efficient by consolidating some of the election precincts? What has been your experience in the past when going to vote in Tattnall County (wait times, facility itself, ease of process)? Additionally, would you rather vote at a precinct on election day or do you take advantage of the Absentee or Advanced voting instead, prior to election day?

Animal Control

Their are a lot of questions surrounding the Tattnall County Animal Shelter. The County Commissioners keep saying that they are going to revisit the issue and look at the ordinances again. For a while the animal shelter was paritally closed. It is open now but isn't capable of handling any real issues. The following is one circumstance of why we need a working animal shelter. What are your thoughts?

(This post was submitted by a reader and is published here in its entirety. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tattnall Journal.)

I need to address a problem that we are having here in Cobbtown that could pose a danger to anyone or anything. A few months back there was a pack of wild dogs running loose around here and a lot of pets were mauled and killed in their own yards. We contacted the animal shelter and cages were brought out and several dogs were caught. The problem seemed to go away until last Thursday when my husband and I went to Vidalia and upon returning home we found our 14 year old blue tick dead. She had been cornered in her dog house and mauled. We don't know if the wild dogs have returned or if it was a coyote (we have seen several lately) but either way the situation is getting dangerous. We notified the sheriff's department and the deputy was supposed to get us some cages out here (the animal shelter does not take calls anymore except from law enforcement)but no cages. The lady at the shelter does not return calls so there is nothing we can do. I guess it will take a child or elderly person being attacked to convince the county that we need animal control officers who will answer calls about incidences like this. Our pets are important to us and it's hard to understand why our pets must suffer in their own yards. Thank you for letting me get this off of my chest and I hope that our county commissioners will step up and provide protection for all of it's citizens in the way of animal control.

(This post was submitted by a reader and is published here in its entirety. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tattnall Journal.)

Alcohol on Sunday?

The Georgia Legislature was considering a proposal that would have allowed municipalities to decide if Sunday alcohol sales should be legal. Would you be in favor of allowing each town to decide? If so, do you think Sunday beer and wine sales should be allowed in your town?

School Vouchers

(This post was submitted by a reader and is published here in its entirety. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tattnall Journal.)

School Vouchers
I have to address this issue as many people fail to see the importance of what is at stake here.

There is currently a bill before Georgia lawmakers that would allow, (in certain situations), parents to use vouchers for their "special needs" children.

Can you guess who is stepping up to loudly protest the idea? Well, that would be the Georgia Association of Educators, our wonderful teacher's union. One union spokesman said "It would open a floodgate to vouchers and that is our primary objection to this bill." Vouchers! Union government teachers go to sleep at night worrying about vouchers. They wake up to nightmares about vouchers. They arise in the morning shivering in a cold sweat brought on by thoughts of vouchers. They see vouchers in every dark corner and under every rock. It seems at times that their entire life is occupied by a focus on keeping that floodgate to vouchers from ever opening.

Surely I don't have to spell this out for you, do I? You do understand why these union teachers fear vouchers as they do, don't you? These teachers are unionized. Their jobs are all but guaranteed. It's terribly difficult to fire them. Politicians fear them. They get three months off a year. AND THEY DON'T HAVE TO PERFORM! Generally speaking, there is no requirement that they do their job! They have a monopoly! The government provides them with a place to work, pays their salaries, and works hard to prevent competition!

Imagine government grocery stores. Groceries are essential, aren't they? Come on, you have to eat! So let's say that about 100 years ago someone came up with the brilliant idea of establishing a system of government-run grocery stores. To make sure that every American got enough to eat, local governments created a nutrition tax. All property owners had to pay a nutrition tax every year amounting to thousands of dollars. Under this great government plan you are assigned to a grocery store when you move into a neighborhood. Every year the local government creates a credit for you at this grocery store; an account in your name. When you want to buy groceries you have to go to this store and no other. Would your assigned grocery store feel any pressure to make sure that you get the best quality foods? Would this grocery store work hard to determine what its customers want? Would you be assured of the latest technology and products? The answer to all of these questions is, of course, no! Why would they? What do they have to fear? Competition? There IS no competition! The citizen's money is taken away from him by force and put into an account at one particular grocery store, and no other store. If you want to go to a private, non-government-operated grocery store you are going to have to dig into your own pockets and spend even more money! You're trapped, and the grocery store managers and employees know it. There is no real need to deliver a quality shopping experience or the best products. Instead of focusing on their customers these managers and employees focus on getting even more money and benefits from the government.

Oh .. and government grocery store clerks would be focusing on one more thing ... preventing competition. Every once in a while someone is going to step forward with a rather radical idea. Someone is going to suggest that people be given vouchers equal to the amount they pay in grocery taxes so that they, like their rich neighbors, can go shop at those private grocery stores where fresher food and a wider variety of products are available! As soon as this suggestion is made the managers and employees of the government grocery stores are going to erupt into howls of anguish. They will say that this is all a plot to destroy public grocery stores. They will wail that groceries are a necessity and that there should not be any competition in the selling of those groceries. They will watch every politician like a hawk, making sure that none of them even utter so much as a hint that they might be willing to consider the idea of grocery vouchers, and they'll build a government employee union that is so strong and so far-reaching that only the boldest of politicians would dare to cross that line.

It's not groceries we're talking about my friends. It's your children. How long are you going to let these teacher's unions run the show like this?

The voucher program simply gives PARENTS A CHOICE in where they send their children for education. Seems logical, right? Why would school boards and teacher's unions not want parents to have a choice in their child's educaion? They are afraid that a voucher system would drain already financially srapped systems. In some cases, that is true. But what kind of edcuation are our children receiving if there is no competition?

The voucher system will allow parents to take the money that they already pay and use it to send their children to a better school. We have a choice in where we bank, we have a choice in which doctor we see, but in most cases, we don't have a choice in where we can send our children for education. This is frightning. We all know where the state of Georgia stands nationwide in education. Our government educational system is deplorable, to say the least. Say yes to school vouchers and say yes to a choice in education.

(This post was submitted by a reader and is published here in its entirety. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tattnall Journal.)

Wal-Mart

Yes, most all of us venture to Wal-Mart. It's convenient to shop for just about everything you need under one roof. I believe I've only met one person who literally despises the place and would never step foot in the parking lot, let alone the building. He's from New York anyway so does that even count? Who knows.

Okay, back on topic . . . at Monday's County Commissioners' meeting just as it was about to wrap up, someone brought up the idea that we needed a Wal-Mart in Tattnall County and should send them a letter saying so. The commissioners all seemed to agree that a letter should be sent to someone to find out why we didn't have one of those super mega centers too. Huh. I wonder if they took the time to poll all of our small business owners in the county to see if they, too, wanted a Wal-Mart. Probably not. I could sit right here and list a number of businesses that would be quickly sucked under.

Tattnall County is almost completely surrounded by Wal-Marts anyway so there's not much of a chance that we'd get one unless Wal-Mart just had an incredible surplus in their building budget and decided, yeah, why not. If that happened, the big story wouldn't be that Tattnall County was getting a Wal-Mart, it would be which CITY was getting a Wal-Mart. Talk about county rivalry then! Whew. Remember it wasn't too many years ago that we seemed to send that technical school running for another location! You know, come to think of it, that would make for some interesting headlines.