Dear Cherokee County:

Exactly when did you decide that things were so good that you could afford to blow off a substantial investment in your future, in favor of some ideological notion of good and bad?

Oh yeah! That would have been about 50 years ago when you decided that living 30 years behind the times was a good and beneficial position. It's no wonder that so many positive possibilities have fallen by the wayside in favor of those who stand to profit by their exclusion.

Guess what? Your current landfill will eventually reach capacity and no longer be able to accommodate your weekly accumulation of waste. What will happen then? You will be required to pay a collection fee, on top of taxes, to have your refuse transported to a 3-Cycle facility located in a community whose fiscally astute fathers have understood that the allocation of land for a major financial contributor was a significant boost to the local economy.

The roads will be repaired, the bridges will be rebuilt or replaced and dirt tracts will be made accessible for residential or commercial development.

The cascade effect will transform that area into a burgeoning center of progress and prosperity, made more desirable to future investment.

Dear Cherokee County, if you haven't realized by now, this could have been you! Respectfully, Mark L. Jolly Gaffney, S.C.