" Wouldn't the county figure it out that the way to make these numbers go down would be to bring some places here for the people to work in. I mean duh! "

" .....and Clark County has the highest unemployment rate in the area.....surprise, surprise. Actually, no surprise - just visit Casey, Westfield, Martinsville and you'll see why? Oh, I almost forgot - Clark County has the highest sales tax, the highest property tax, and the most incompetent government in the area. Do you know where people in Clark County move to when they had enough of the stupidity - Coles, Cumberland (especially Greenup), Effingham, Edgar, Crawford, and Jasper Counties. "

" no doubt Zeldalu. How about some real businesses in Mattoon and not just fast food, and video stores. Oh wait thats right we are going to get more hotels. Here is a thought, if the mall would not charge an arm and a leg to rent a place maybe we would have some new stores. This town is a joke anymore with employment, heck I have to drive to Champaign each day to work just to earn a descent pay and have a good job. Come on city councel do your job not just get a check. "

" actually, the rent in the mall is quite reasonable compared to other places. it's not the rent that's keeping businesses away. it's the condition of the mall itself. which is why they approved making it a TIF district and why they've got plans for remodeling it. obviously stores have no problem coming to the area just look at the old k-mart. why move into a 35year old building when when there's a brand new one available? "

" The mall, just like Charleston public aid office...just needs to be ripped down and re-built from scratch. Both places have the stench of mold/mildew throughout the building. "

" Hate to admit it, but the city blew one right past me. I made a major purchase out at the Coles County Mall last week. Just for grins, I checked my receipt. Lo and behold! The tax rate is now 7.75% at the mall. The clerk said it's been that way since July 1st. I then checked a sales receipt from Wal-Mart. It was 6.75%. What the ...??? What a great way to attract more business to the mall!! Yeah, that's it, raise the sales tax by 1%. That'll bring em in! LOL "

" Hey gringa, every year a major local retailer has a no sales tax (6.75%) day, and they also have 10 and 15 percent off sales day during the same year. Guess which one of these special days brings in the most traffic?

If you said the no tax day you were right. This makes no sense economically. Funny how peoples minds work.

I guess we can chalk that up to our overall aversion to paying any kind of taxes. LOL! "

" no one even knew the sales tax went up. the city administrator came in and said "why aren't you charging the right sales tax?" which was the first anyone had heard about it. only 3 stores in the mall had switched to 7.75%. it was news to everyone else. "

" "I guess we can chalk that up to our overall aversion to paying any kind of taxes. LOL!" *** Agreed. And the ironic thing is that of every retail dollar spent that day, 6.75% STILL gets sent off to Springfield to be used for seemingly unfettered spending habits. *** tammer65 will flip out over what I'm about to post here: Take the EIU budgets for a full-fledged cop shop and health services as two good examples of wasted (duplicated) spending. Why on earth do we need two police departments in a town of 10,000 residents (OK 20,000 residents about 8 months of the year)? Why on earth do we need a full cadre of medical personnel on EIU's campus (to hand out excused absence forms for the missed exam someone slept through) when we have under-utilized medical capacity right here in Coles County? The only *law enforcement personnel* we need on campus is for parking violations and on-campus party monitors. All major crime on campus is handled by CHP or the Sheriff or the ISP. The only medical personnel we need on campus is, at most, the PA variety or a few RNs and clerks. All major illness and injury is handled by either SB or Carle or the students' hometown doctors. "

" I'm not that familiar with the health service at EIU, gringa. It's been a number of years since I was a student there. But I will readily agree with your assessment of the EIU police department. I suspect the reason they spend so much time patrolling Lincoln is that there is a lack of things for them to do on campus. I don't know if they still do this, but they used to use student workers to write tickets for parking violations. The situation over at LLC is even more ridiculous, in that they seem to have a full time police department their too. In fact they even sent their chief to the FBI training academy. Talk about a waste of tax payers dollars. Yes I know the college didn't pay for his expenses, but we the tax payers did.

Look out, incoming from Steve Senteney. LOL!! "

" you must not get out much gringa, it's not just the mall charging 7.75%. do individual establishments get to decide how much tax to charge? "

" btw, i just got back from the charleston walmart ..... 6.75%...followed by 1.00%. help me add that will ya, gringa? "