Well, it’s that time of year again. Levies.

It boils down to whether or not you want to make your house payment and put food on the table.

These levies will take your hard-earned money or your pension to keep you from doing one or the other. In some cases maybe both.

We’ve been in a recession for more than a year, and I’m sure the South Kitsap School District and South Kitsap Fire and Rescue are well aware of that.

But they still want to run levies and take more of your money.

It has to end sometime, and with the country in the shape we’re in right now, with high unemployment (more than 250,000 in Washington alone), ungodly debt and no end in sight, everyone has to cut back.

Let’s start with the levies.

Look at all your major companies — GE, the auto industry, retailers closing down, Caterpillar laying off 20,000 and now even problems at Microsoft — all of which has been an enormous shock to Wall Street.

Even the colleges are being forced to cut back. But in these tough times, I have seen no indication that the schools are contemplating cutbacks or layoffs.

We all know they are top-heavy with administrators and all kinds of superintendents, assistant superintendents, supervisors, foremen and an army of maintenance people.

Now they want $2 million more than they will receive in 2009, the year the levy ends.

Every year they propose a levy it seems they ask for the same things — new roofs for a building someplace, new computers, rewiring all the buildings, school supplies and, always, more teachers.

And yet enrollment goes down every year. I wonder why.

Is it because parents feel they’re no longer getting the type of education they should in a public school? Is that why so many are homeschooling, or sending their kids to a private or parochial school?

Now some of them that couldn’t make it in a public school are going to the new Washington Youth Academy that just opened in Bremerton, which will also be paid for by the taxpayers.

Yes, it’s time for the school and fire districts to tighten their belts just like the taxpayers have to do in these times.

Retirees don’t get big cost-of-living increases every year, like someone already making $100,000 from the school district does.

Usually when we get a small increase, it’s gobbled up by the utility companies or Social Security takes it back to pay the increase in medical payments.

It’s a lose-lose situation, and you end up paying more in the next-higher income tax bracket.

Sorry, in these tough times I have to vote no.

JIM E. DELORM

Port Orchard