I bumped into my UFO guy again and he told me that Village Hall has two purposes, one, to expand the tax base and two, to use that money to remove the snow from our sidewalks.

Then he left me to read my paper and drink my coffee and ponder his statement on my own.

If our present revenue intake doesn't permit us to remove the snow, perhaps it's best that each property owner buy a snow blower and remove his own snow. It's cheaper that way, isn't it? And aren't we doing it that way now?

If the UFO guy's hypothesis is correct, then we wouldn't need to expand our tax base. 'Leave things to take care of themselves.

But there obviously was more to it than what appears on the surface. That's usually the case.

He probably meant that if Village Hall wasn't improving our services and if citizens weren't demanding all of these extra services, we wouldn't need more money and therefore we wouldn't have to expand our tax base.

Obviously, that's not it.

Perhaps if we substituted the building of a new police station for snow removal, expanding our tax base would make more sense. But it seems that we could borrow money for building a new police station and pay for it over one hundred years. We wouldn't have to expand the the tax base then. Perhaps only a little bit.

Ah! It's more complicated than that. It's more than snow removal or a police station. It has to do with bringing in young families with children in order to keep community and community services. 

As I finished my coffee I thought this is too difficult to figure out today. I'll have to come back to the subject another day. But then again, if Village Hall did have more money we could all sell our snowblowers and . . . . .