Leave it to a government agency to figure out how to waste money and to create more work for employees (so that, ultimately, more employees will be needed). Leave it to the Fayette County tax office to take the lead in this waste.
Several years ago, I applied for and received blue and white hanging tag with the image of a wheelchair. It’s the thing that allows me to use parking spaces reserved for disabled persons. The tag can be red and white; the wheelchair symbol can be incorporated in a vehicle’s regular license plate.
Several years ago, I showed the clerk my driver’s license and the form signed by my doctor. She took a plastic tag from a stack, wrote my name, her name, and the expiration date on the tag, and handed it to me with a smile.
Today, I went to the same office to renew the tag. This time, the process was different. First, the clerk had to look me up in the computer, and make some sort of entries. Then, he took a cardboard tag, and ran it through a printer to print my name on one side of the tag. Then, he ran the tag through the printer (all this by hand) a second time to print the opposite side of the tag. Then he took the tag to a laminating machine, and laminated the cardboard. Then he used scissors to cut away the surplus lamination. Finally, he handed me the tag.
Whoever implemented this new system should be fired, since they apparently don’t have the grace and guts to resign in shame for creating this expensive fiasco.
I know the answer: it was possible to erase the dates on the old tags, and write in a new expiration date. Hence, the new system. My response: there is a better way. Too bad you didn’t try to find it before saddling the taxpayers with the new system.
On a final note, thank you, all, for paying for my new, more expensive hanging tag. There was no direct charge to me. It was paid for by our taxes.
We must take back our government.
Paul W. Lentz, Jr.
Peachtree City, Ga.
