The World Around You

Jefferson County Sherriff Mike Hale thinks he has come up with a brilliant scheme to combat terrorism in his jurisdiction.

Sheriff’s officials on Saturday will teach the first “Sheriff’s Phone Posse” class. Deputies will instruct residents how to recognize criminal activity and identify terror threats.

“It’s like a high-tech neighborhood watch,” sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Randy Christian said. “We’ll basically teach them what we teach our officers.”

Christian said deputies will teach the volunteers to be more observant when it comes to signs of crime. For example, he said, they may not recognize that a knocked-out left rear window could be the sign of a stolen car.

The program is similar, he said, to federal authorities training truck drivers as lookouts.

“We want to give them the confidence of knowing that we really do want their information,” Christian said. “The truth is, we do want to hear about it and be able to check it out for ourselves.”

So, the next time you’re in Jefferson County and someone is eyeing you and talking on their cell phone, they may just be reporting your activity to the authorities as “suspicious”.

By the way if you aren’t familiar with the federal grant program training truckers to be lookouts, it’s called Highway Watch. I am certain it has been highly successful in thwarting terrorism.

The Montgomery City Council voted last night to enact two sales tax holidays in Montgomery. My initial reaction when this idea was proposed was that it was purely good PR by the council and the Mayor and they certainly are putting a shiny face on it.

“We’re moving forward on this issue,” Cook said afterward. “All that is left before us is to just go out and spend some money and buy some things.”

Cook, though he refrained from involvement in setting specific tax-relief dates, was pleased about having one before the Fourth of July.

“Not only will it be Independence Day for us, our nation, it also will be independence day from taxes for the city of Montgomery,” he said.

Councilman Tim Head afterward said, “The people of Montgomery are going to be very excited to finally be able to get some tax relief.”

Mayor Bobby Bright afterward said that losses of revenue from the tax breaks would cost $250,000 per day. But he said the city can afford its share of the sales tax breaks.

“It’s one of those issues that no one opposes, quite frankly,” he said.

No Bobby, it’s one of those issues that no one has the guts to oppose. I don’t fault them for covering their butts on this one, but it is not real tax relief and it is not sound policy. All you’ve done is create a situation where the retail establishments will be madhouses on the day in question and ghost towns in the days before and after. People are going to put off big ticket purchases until that day and citizens from all over the region will come to Montgomery to buy on that day. What is yet to be seen is whether the sales tax collections for the year will go up or down. Will the amount of additional money spent make up for the lost revenue. It probably won’t and the Mayor will be telling us how we don’t have the funds to do this or that.

Oh wait, he was doing that last night. At the same time he was standing behind the tax holiday, he was bemoaning the fact that he would not be able to provide the resources to the schools to continue an extremely successful reading program. What is wrong with this picture? The city doesn’t have the money for this program, yet we’re going to give up at least $500,000 in tax revenue for some good PR. It’s just a little disconcerting to me.