TAXPAYERS WILL SOON SEE POSITIVE BENEFIT

It's that time of year again ... struggling to find receipts, always having
just the wrong form, wondering whether your calculations are correct ... in
short, it's tax time.

Dealing with the Internal Revenue Service is never at the top of anyone's
fun list, and you can't help but wonder where your money is going. I've
never seen a nuclear attack submarine or a CIA agent, and yet there's a
little piece of my paycheck invested in every one of them.

So, it's nice when taxpayers can see a definite, positive benefit to their
taxes that will come back to their community. It's going to happen here in
Huntley thanks to a program administered by the U.S. Department of Justice,
called COPS.

COPS (it stands for Community Oriented Policing Services) was founded in
1995 after President Bill Clinton made one of those lofty speeches during
his State of the Union Address, promising to put 100,000 new police
officers on the street by 2000.

In one of their rare agreements, Clinton and Congressmen and women have
been spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the last few years to
accomplish that goal. More than 92,000 officers have been hired.

Last week, the government announced new COPS grants for 130 communities in
38 states. Huntley was one of the handful of Illinois towns on the grant list.

The newly proposed $5.8 million dollar village budget for 2000 now includes
funding for three new police officers, including new community service
officers and a new liaison officer to run the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance
Education) program and Huntley High School.

So, a fancy speech made four years ago in Washington has finally trickled
down through the myriad passageways of the political process into a
tangible benefit to everyone who lives in the Village of Huntley.

Just the encouragement I need to finally drag out my trusty calculator and
the dreaded Form 1040.