Leaving town

To the Editor:

What once started as a simple request to rezone a house only for the sole purpose of becoming a not-for-profit corporation has now come to this.

Me, my husband and our entire family (blood and married relatives), and all of our animals have now suffered in my efforts.

After the first meeting with the council on our proposal and it was announced that my husband has to shut down his auto repair business immediately, I cried nonstop until the next meeting and then I cried for days on after that.

I can openly and honestly admit that I have never so much wanted to take back in my life something I said or something I did until now. But on the other hand, we will survive and all of our animals will also. We are moving out of this city hastily and now are extremely careful as to letting anyone now know where we are going because of this.

I personally never in my life saw such incorrigible behavior and felt so ashamed to openly admit that I once lived in the city of Brazil. I have very deep roots here in Indiana from my grandfather who was just your average coal miner and I am still proud of that. However, still wonder what and/or why this city has become so cold and uncaring.

I did exactly as I was told to do. I obtained within a one-to-two block radius only a petition of signatures from our surrounding neighbor's and then someone who stepped in with another prohibiting petition from God knows where just took away our livelihood. Where or what is the justification in that?

All this was done to us with a petition with 290 signatures along with countless letters and e-mails that were sent to this city on our behalf. This city's actions have brought upon itself negative publicity from all over the world.

As Mr. Jack Hayes has stated, there must be another way to do this outside of the city limits.

There is a way which me and my husband have found but not without regret and now I have to pick my husband up and out of only the second home he has ever lived in.

What we leave behind here in the city of Brazil is hopefully a lesson that which we all can learn from. We were trying to be part of a solution and ended up being shunned, shut down and pushed out. But when we lay our heads down to sleep, we can sleep peacefully knowing that we tried. Can you?

It's a documented fact that one unneutered male cat and one unspayed female and their offspring can produce as many as 400,000 stray cats in seven years. Now that we are prohibited from doing the city's work at our own expense, how does the city propose to find the manpower and funding to spay, neuter, prevent disease and find homes for all these new stray cats?

By the way, I think I have pretty much stopped crying now and moved on. I can only believe that everything happens for a reason. What the reason is for the City of Brazil to do what they have done to us is beyond me. As someone once said, however, is if it doesn't break you then it just makes you stronger. Can the elected and appointed city officials honestly say that?

Tammy Rothrock,

Brazil