April 23, 2011
Saturday

Are any of you aware of how many of our tax dollars the USCG wastes every year?
I'm willing to bet that most of you never had any idea what the Coast Guard and other branches of the military do with your money.

As an employee of the Ketchikan city landfill, I have seen so many things that we as taxpayers paid for, destroyed and thrown in the landfill, that it makes me sick.

I am fed up with it!

Most of these things were either in good working condition or easily repairable prior to being smashed, cut up, and otherwise destroyed.

Things such as boats, engines, tools, generators, air compressors, welding machines and equipment, four wheel drive vehicles, outboards, atv's, plumbing parts, hand tools, and even some new unused things.

Also many years ago I watched as Coast Guard personel took chain saws and sledge hammers to 3 perfectly good Boston whalers and the outboard engines on them at the dump site at the Shoal Cove Loran station in Carrol Inlet. When I tried to stop them because I wanted them, they told me to go away, nobody can have them or buy them.

Every one of these things was paid for by you and me. And yet our government wants more of our money. Instead of destroying and disposing of all these things, why don't they put it up for sale or auction so those of us who actually paid for it can get something for our tax dollars instead of watching it be thrown in the dump and buried?

Mark Hoyt
Ketchikan, AK