It doesn't take a lot of people to fill the Big Stone Gap Town Council's small meeting room to capacity, and there were plenty to do that and then some on Tuesday.
Proposed tax increases attracted a crowd to Tuesday's public hearing on the budget for next fiscal year. The Town Council is seeking a 5 cent increase in the real estate tax, from 39 cents per $100 valuation to 44 cents; a 1 percent increase in the meals tax, from the current 5 percent to 6 percent, the maximum allowable by state law; and a 10 cent increase in a pack of cigarettes following last year's 5 cent-per-pack town tax on top of a big state increase.
"You're going to be hurting a lot of people," Don Dalton told council members.
Darrell Smith said the town would have the highest meals tax in Wise County and on cigarettes, too. He said the town would lose tax dollars on those revenue sources because people will take their business elsewhere.
"You've taxed the people to death, and you've taxed businesses to death," said Larry Williams. He said water and sewer bills are already outrageous, and it seems as if Town Hall wants to run people and businesses off, rather than attract them to stay, settle and help the town prosper.
"Raising taxes is not going to do anything but hurt everybody," said April Hutchinson. "Raising taxes is not going to do anything but bring the economy down even further from what it already is."
Patricia Scarberry said "right's right, and wrong's wrong. And this is wrong."
Instead of complaining, Patricia Hughes said people should focus on finding answers to problems. She said "naysayers" killed a proposal for an assisted-living facility to be built in town as well as knocked the props from under a move to annex adjacent areas.
"We need to be positive and talk about solutions," she said, and in that vein Hughes urged the Town Council to increase every non-town resident water customer's bill to help make up any financial strain in the town budget.
Greg Wade, owner of Wade's Produce Market, said last year's hike on cigarettes cost his business a 55 percent drop in cigarette sales. Wade said he realizes his full-page ad in a local newspaper expressing his concerns over tax increases may have made him more visible than most in the local tax debate.
"If you all want to give me the hot seat, fine. Bring it on," he said.
Jimmy Mitchell said people vote to put others in office to take care of things and can't be expected to attend every Town Council meeting. Mitchell said he read a comment from a town official that low-income folks won't feel a pinch from the tax increases.
"Well," said Mitchell, "I feel the pinch."
Helen Wright said senior citizens like herself can hardly afford the cost of living the way things already are with the soaring cost of medications and the like. As for higher taxes, Wright said she didn't know how senior citizens "would be able to do anything else but pay taxes."
Councilman Edward Hutchinson joined the public hearing as a citizen.
"I think I know what the majority of you want," he said, adding that he and his wife care for an elderly relative on a fixed income themselves.
"I want to listen to people," he said, "because it's the people who put me here."
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