Following the passing of the new bylaws, How many are troubled by the sheer volume of threatened cutoffs happening in town? As a community should we not be fostering good will and sustainability? The iron fist of bureaucracy is way out of hand when someone can be less than 100 dollars behind and still have what is, frankly, the most important resource Linden offers its citizens being turned off in homes with families. We do not live in a major city where the people being cut off are merely numbers in a balance sheet. This is a community of people who know each other, and the embarrassment that comes along with this is destructive to such a familiar group.

The bylaws were put in place and most citizens never even got a chance to look it over before receiving notices of disconnection. This is simply not enough time for folks in the midst of an economic recession to re-order their priorities. Children are going without baths before school due to a broken system. Does this sound right? Thirty days ago these families were counting on their water bills to be carried forward onto municipal taxes and the amount could be amortized over the period of time remaining before tax season. Now, less than one month has passed and these same families are choosing whether to buy the food they had budgeted this week. Or pay a bill they have been comfortably spreading out over the fiscal year for many years.

This is not the community spirit that we claim to have in our public relations pamphlets, this website, and the new MSP. We as a community must come together to help defend those who cannot defend themselves. Such as the children being forced to live in a home without water service until their parents can re-budget and get a paycheque in to the village office, most likely while having some other necessary service going to the wayside, or choosing water over healthy food in this pay-period to ensure their children can live in a house with flowing water.

And finally, the consequences that our bureaucrats downtown have failed to mention, and one which I am sure their accountants will agree with... This new bylaw is taking money away from our town. In the past when someone couldn't afford their 50-60 dollar water bill it carried forth to taxes and then was paid, often from a mortgage or from a budget that people have been working with for their entire time living in linden. This ensured that the money would still get into the village coffers, and the family in question who was struggling could continue to live a decent life while working out how to pay this bill.

In the new system when someone who is barely making ends meet or who is on a 30 day pay rotation misses a payment the water is turned off. Thus there is no income to the village during this period of duress, and the village staff is called on to dig up long hidden shut-off valves and turn them off, costing the village money. And then when the payment can be made, they are called on again to do the same destructive digging to turn it back on. Again at cost to our village and indirectly to ourselves through taxation.

This is patently ridiculous, the logic behind it is baffling and counter productive. The damage it causes to our local families is often irreparable and will lead to an outflow of those who are trying to make a foothold in our town and start raising families. The new MSP on the frontpage of this site has a lot of feel-good statements and claims about the caring and family atmosphere of our town. We are systematically killing this atmosphere while trying to emulate the cities we despised and moved to linden to escape.

Please take this up with your village office. If those of us with comfortable incomes and no financial misery ignore the problems that this is causing our less-fortunate families it will never go away. We must stand as one and let them know this is not what Linden is about. What happened to the barn-raisings, the communal pot lucks, and the true country spirit of helping our neighbors that made this town come together oh so many years ago? If we are going to kill that spirit with paperwork let us at least be honest with new families coming into our town and stop posting our 'country family values' as a selling point.