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As a several-year member of the Powerhouse Gym at Golf and Arlington Heights roads, I've been carefully following the Arlington Heights government's plans to demolish it (along with the rest of the businesses located in that plaza). How would you feel if you had a small but modestly profitable business that you had devoted much of your life to, and one day the government came along and announced it's going to demolish your business in favor of a chain store that will give it more money? You'd think that while you slept the government had been taken over by people having more in common with Hussein and Hitler than with Washington and Jefferson. The purpose of government in the United States is NOT to maximize tax revenue, but to provide a safe and stable environment where people can pursue their dreams, including small business ownership, free from harassment by criminals. I urge those residing in the voting district to make clear to the "trustees" that they will be kicked out of office at the next election if these businesses are demolished. And, furthermore, that the new businesses will be boycotted. When the Tax-Increment-Financing laws were passed several years ago the proponents got the wary to look the other way by implying that such drastic measures would only be used in dire circumstances, such as blighted inner-city areas. Yet now TIF is being used to demolish a group of small businesses in an affluent suburb! As we dream every Christmas about how nice it would be if our towns were more like Bailey Park, let us remember how it isn't so much the Potters of the world that are making that impossible, but rather the unethical tyrants of big government. Neal S. Reynolds Schaumburg
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