Dear Editor:

Rollingwood should dissolve the Rollingwood Community Development Corporation and redirect its sales tax receipts to the city’s general fund where they can be used for water system repairs, street repaving and park maintenance free of costly legal entanglements.

John Lindell’s letter to the editor in last week’s Picayune asserts that the city cannot redirect these public funds to the city’s general fund. Mr. Lindell either misunderstands or is unaware of several key provisions of state law that clearly authorize the city to take this action.

Sections 321.101 and 321.409 of the tax code explicitly authorize the city to call an election to simultaneously repeal the RCDC sales tax and enact an additional sales tax of the same amount that goes into the general fund. If the city then dissolves RCDC, under section 501.406 of the Development Corporation Act, the $589,000 now held prisoner in RCDC’s bank account will go into the city’s general fund. The $589,000 and the future sales tax revenue stream will not just disappear (as implied by Mr. Lindell). They will be redirected to the city’s general fund.

Mr. Lindell’s proposal to call an election to authorize RCDC to use sales tax receipts for residential water projects is a case in point with respect to wasteful expenditure of public funds on lawyers. The city has paid its lawyers tens of thousands of dollars to opine about whether RCDC can fund residential water projects. The opinions have ranged all over the map. Mr. Lindell, himself, has previously taken the position that spending RCDC funds on residential water projects would be illegal, and threatened to protest to the Attorney General’s Office if the city tried. Why is Rollingwood spending all this money on legal fees instead of water projects?

It is time to quit wasting money on lawyers and to start spending public funds on streets, water system repairs, park maintenance and other activities that serve the public. To do that, the City Council must call an election to redirect the RCDC sales tax to the general fund and residents must vote to set our sales tax free.

Earnest Casstevens

Rollingwood