It has been obvious for a long time that there is one similarity between Augusta and our local government in Windham and that is that they blame each other when our taxes are raised.

The recently announced cutbacks in state funds for schools and municipalities will result in higher local taxes because school and town officials will blame those increases on lack of funds from Augusta. Officials in Augusta will then claim it’s our local officials who are raising our taxes.

I blame both of them for raising our taxes and I relish the time when the vast majority of voters finally wake up and smell the roses and take control of our runaway government thugs who love to threaten us with disaster being imminent.

You’ve heard it from me many times in past columns but I will remind you once again. If you don’t approve local school and municipal budgets, your children will become dumber, your roads will become even worse to travel on and certainly my favorite, your house and business will burn to the ground.

What bothers me the most is that for the most part this is already true. The United States is failing to educate our children while the number of students is declining and school budgets skyrocket. All of us see the conditions of the roads here in Maine when we drive on them. I have to ask one question. Where did several hundreds of millions of dollars go in the Maine Department of Transportation? I’ll tell you the perfect answer in two words: To government.

And that is truly the problem in Augusta and Windham. The majority of taxes go to government itself because we have a government that takes care of itself before it takes care of the taxpayers. As a retired member of the military I can definitely prove it.

The very first thing we have to do as voters is to remove any present member of government, especially those who worked for government, from local, state and federal elected positions. Why? Just take a look at the Maine Legislature where the largest group is, in fact, former educators and other government workers that perpetuate the pork for their peers.

At the same time take a good look at who runs what in Augusta and you will see many familiar faces that were former legislators. That’s right, folks, the idiots you elect give jobs to those who you elected in the past so you are part of the problem as to why our taxes are so high in Maine.

That’s the first line in the sand for me. Kick out every elected official in Augusta as a start.

The second line in the sand is in Windham. We have a council and school board that are fully capable of increasing our property taxes without blinking an eye. I can guarantee that the school board will pledge to cut spending by reducing sports and other popular non-educational student activities just like Portland is doing now. This will cause parents to storm meetings and proclaim that their children will be deprived of a meaningful school atmosphere.

I have no problem paying taxes for education but what I have a serious problem with is paying even more taxes for the worthless staff that makes up a large part of the education and even municipal budget in Windham. I am willing to pay for teachers but that’s where I draw the line.

It is high time for a head tax for each student whose parent can afford it to pay for the school administrators, school buses and for sports programs.

And when it comes to the municipal side of things, it’s time some of the newly elected councilors start doing what they promised in their campaigns. A new town manager and no new taxes rings a bell for me from their meeting at the Little Meeting House in North Windham during their election campaign.

But I will end this column on a side note and that’s the comments coming from our interim economic developer, Tom Bartell, about the noise coming from the firing range of Bushmaster and the complaints from neighbors about the noise. Who was there first, Bushmaster or its neighbors? It is not like the Busque quarry at Route 302 and Nash Road because the neighbors were already there and that also goes for those affected by the skate park next to the Public Safety Building. Isn’t it amazing how politics works in Windham!

To me, it is very apparent that there are double standards in our town but then again there always have been. Time for another line in the sand.

P.S. I am tired of the traffic causing excessive noise on Route 202 (where I live). I demand that the state and local government make it accessible for local traffic only in order to reduce the noise.

Lane Hiltunen lives in Windham.