This is Viewpoints for Monday, October 3, 2016

Fool me once?

After four years of debate over the issue of building a new senior center, the project is on hold due to funding that is not there anymore. We are to believe that feasibility studies have evaporated the money that was set aside for a new senior center. In November 2015, it was approved by the commissioners that the center would be housed in the Central City Park area. It was mentioned that $712,000 would be added due to the selling of the senior center located on Adams Street.

The original funding from the SPLOST for a new center was $2 million. It was said in a previous meeting that an additional $300,000 could be found, bringing the total to $3 million. Bruce Morris from Sizemore LLC Group drew up a projected plan for the new center. Everyone was excited. The current building is in terrible shape. Parking is an ongoing problem. There is a waiting list for new seniors.

We were caught off guard when it was announced that there would be a meeting at 1 p.m. Sept. 13. This announcement was not made until after 1 p.m. Sept. 12. Therefore, only a handful of seniors were at the meeting. Why should the seniors vote for approval of another SPLOST? Bite me once, shame on you; bite me twice, shame on me.

In its Sept. 27 meeting the $3 million plan was approved and the county will start accepting bids. The county has $2.3 million in SPLOST funds remaining for the project and is looking to other sources to fund the remainder of the project.

Nonsensical hoops

I am a 62 year-old woman about to have a birthday. As it happens, my driver’s license is up for renewal this year. I received a card in the mail reminding me that I needed to bring more documentation than I had submitted in the past. I took a document from each of the three categories listed on the card to Drivers Services. The very nice agent then told me I would need my marriage license or divorce decree since my last name had changed since my birth. (There was a message on the card that more documents would be required if my name had changed since birth, but it was not prominently displayed in the three lists.) The very nice agent then told me that if I couldn’t locate one of those documents, a state or federal income tax return in my married name would suffice. So the state of Georgia has been more than willing to accept income tax payment without proof of my name for 20 years, but is unwilling to issue me a driver’s permit without it.

I wish I could say I was speechless, but no one who knows me would believe that. I was furious that I would need to show what amounted to transfer of ownership documents from my former husband in order to get a license.

By the way, I had previously shown documentation when I had my maiden name changed to my married name on the old license and when I received my Social Security card in my married name.

This is a requirement that applies overwhelmingly to women, passed into law by a body that is overwhelmingly male. My last name changed for the most common and mundane of reasons. I got married. The prevailing custom in this country is for the wife to assume the last name of the husband. I kept the married name to avoid confusion at work and in my business and personal financial matters.

Married women who have changed their last names at any time in their life should save themselves an extra trip and take their ownership documents with them the first time so the nice men in the Legislature will allow them to drive. It won’t matter that their old license is in their married name. When they renew in eight years, they will be showing it again if the law doesn’t change.

Last time I checked we have real problems in this state: education issues, transportation issues, serious problems in child protection services and numerous others. This requirement is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. I can bet that if men were the ones who had to jump through nonsensical bureaucratic hoops to obtain a license, the requirement would not exist.

Is Trump broke?

Some say that Donald Trump’s businesses are deep in the red. It makes a lot sense when you think about it. Why else would a self-proclaimed “billionaire” steal more than a quarter of a million dollars from a charitable foundation in order to pay off his own personal lawsuits? Using the figure that Trump claims to be worth, he could have paid the court-ordered settlements from his own pocket 40,000 times over. Instead, he used money donated to his charity to pay off his bills.

Being cash poor would explain that; however, it doesn’t explain why he used more than $10,000 of the charity’s money to purchase a painting of himself to hang in the dining room of one of his failing properties.

He can’t release his income tax returns, not because he is being “audited.” No one believes that. Trump can’t release a single tax return, past or present, because then we would all see the biggest lie that he has used to hook the gullible who follow him — that he is a successful businessman.

This story was originally published October 2, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Monday, October 3, 2016."