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The day before Thanksgiving, El Centro Latino shut its operations down. For the past five years or so my office suite at People of Faith Against the Death Penalty has been located right next to El Centro Latino’s offices in downtown Carrboro. Every day year after year my colleagues and I saw scores of people enter El Centro for help and receive it. Every day we saw and heard happy children run and play and get tutored around the officesof El Centro. We saw adults taking classes. Every day El Centro’s clients overflowed into the hallways of the building. Every day we saw dedicated and caring staff members of El Centro try meet the needs of so many.

I often wondered how they managed. It was clearly exhausting and unrelenting work.

But even though I was so close and saw the amazing work theywere doing I think I took El Centro Latino for granted. I think our community probably has too. Had I not seen it all I would not have known the great work being done there.

Local governments need money. Meanwhile items are sold locally that are a burden on the public and cost citizens money. Likewise for bad practices. One solution to balance these things out is to tax the undesirable activities and products, both to discourage them and to provide funds to help offset their costs to the community.