With the recent revelations that the State of Alaska instead of making money on our oil this year, due to SB21 we will be paying the oil companies to take our oil, it has become apparent that the state cannot afford to pay for Homer’s public safety building.

The Homer City Council, unaware or uncaring, plans to proceed with this monument to the police state. Mayor Beth Wythe herself admitted “When you put it in perspective, it is an absurd amount of money, but the City of Homer has had tremendous success asking for absurd amounts of money.”

 It appears this time though, the Homer City Council will be expecting the community of Homer to pay for it. I took the liberty to do the math. The current cost of the public safety building is $30 million with an estimated 5,000 local residents to pay for it.

At current costs, the Homer public safety building will be $6,000 per resident of Homer, or $24,000 for a family of four. Is this something the families of Homer feel they can afford?

When approached by the people of Homer to spend money fixing up the HERC building for the Boys and Girls Club and community center, we were told the citizens of  Homer “want things and they don’t want to pay for it” and then the city council proceeded to attempt to tax our food again.

 There is always plenty of money for the “needs” of the city council, but they don’t seem interested in the wants and needs of the public. At the same time, they want us to now pay so they can take our property and buildings that were given to the public for use by the community.

It is time for the people of Homer to step up and let the city council know that we are not paying for their dreams of a $30 million safety station.

 Instead the public must demand that they city council use the money suddenly available for tearing down the buildings to instead fix them up for the Boys and Girls club and other public use as we previously requested.

Jo Kimball