As part of a new set of discussion threads, we asked residents of Adams County “What is the biggest issue in Adams County today?“. We received a lot of good feedback and commentary, and will be summing it up below.
The most overwhelming issue that locals voiced complaints about was taxes. Between property taxes and school taxes, taxes in general outranked all other complaints by double.
Next in line was actually a tie between three issues. Parking, Jobs, and surprisingly local government officials being either resistant to change or corrupt.
The highest ranking complaints have to do with money, from being overtaxed, not making enough money, or not having the proper jobs here to sustain a way of living for this area.
What’s even more interesting is the Gettysburg Times had an article in the May 16th, 2018 edition that says our parking budget was over unexpectedly by about $21,000 (of a $1.07 million budget), meaning we brought in more from parking than expected. With Parking being such a high issue for residents, does this mean that our local community would benefit from lower parking now that we have a surplus in our budget?
The next set of concerns had to do with roadwork and lack of public transportation. Roadwork right now is pretty bad on the west side of town, but it will eventually get better. Others pointed out that roadwork will always be a thing in order to maintain roads overall, so there’s no way to eliminate it entirely. We spoke about public transportation (or lack thereof) in a previous post, but there doesn’t seem to be a good solution outside of our growing Uber/Lyft community and some local independent concierge type services.
Lower on our list of issues would be the recent I.C.E. raids, minimum wage, lack of activities for kids, disorganized or lack of local emergency personnel, and too much complaining by the locals, ironically enough.
While drugs were mentioned briefly, I’m happy to see that this doesn’t seem to be as large of an issue here compared to some of our neighboring areas. I’m also surprised that as much as I’ve seen locals complain about the tourists before, not once were tourists themselves mentioned (just complaints about raised prices for tourists).
At the bottom of the list of straggler issues are the following:
- business zoning
- lack of mental health providers
- affordable housing
- gym prices
- unethical businesses
- traffic
- school board finances
- amenities
- condition of downtown
- drugs
- tourist prices
- store variety
- conservatives
Do you feel this list is fairly complete? What would you add to it?
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