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Show Battle Creek It's up to the people to decide. The recent controversy between the Salt Lake City teachers and their Board of Education regarding regard-ing the amount of teachers pay, might be referred to the citizens at a special election. That was advocated ad-vocated at an educators' conclave last Thursday. It's a good -thing that sanity prevailed pre-vailed among the teachers and the threatened April 29 strike was called off. After all the teachers were under signed contract un- til the end of the current school year and could have been held in violation had they quit before June 1. A strike would have accomplished accom-plished nothing except to bring disapproval dis-approval and criticism upon the teacher's headts. What the taxpayers would ultimately ul-timately do cannot be predicted. To meet the demands of the teachers teach-ers would require a boost of another anoth-er 3.5 mills in the general tax levy. Surely there are plenty of Salt Lakers who feel that they are tax-ridden the way things are now. These would vote against the increase. in-crease. Likewise many others hold that the welfare of the children depends upon higher teacher wages. These would vote andl work for the proposal. The outcome? Anybody's guess. What is happening in Salt Lake City will doubtless be repeated in many other districts throughout the State. Higher pay for the teachers tea-chers will mean higher taxes. There's no other way around it. The people will have to make the decision. All of this is another striking example of the tragic shape we have got ourselves into. Certainly Certain-ly if all the local, state, special and federal taxes were added up, the staggering total would be more than ample to finance every worthy wor-thy public service and function. In fact taxes could be reduced if there was no waste, and that's a fact. The proposed federal budget of 71-plus billions is a peace-time disgrace. President Eisenhower and the Congress are now engaged in a buck-passing contest with neither neith-er having the courage to eliminate elimin-ate the nonessentials and cut down the waste. Letters by the thousands thous-ands from taxpayers a,re cluttering clutter-ing the Congressmen's deslds, all demanding that the outrageous budget be cut. Most experts predict pre-dict however, that only a token reduction will be made. For the rank and file taxpayers there are but two alternatives. Tc vote the increases, pay the bills and keep their mouths shut; or tc raise such a hellabeloo over wastt and foolish spending, that even the professional political spenders wil be glad to listen to reason. A gooc old-fasluoned "Dave Beck" inves tigation might be a gv.od thing foi some of the Bnreauocrats. Properly Proper-ly focused spotlights would revea many a rathole. Politicians have demonstrate time after time that they haven' the moral courage to do anythim about it. Yes, the people must de cide. So long 'til Thursday. |