We get it. It’s hard for people to vote to impose a new tax on themselves. It seems to run counter to common sense. After all, why would voters willingly volunteer to add to their own tax burden?

And yet, for the second time in two years, that’s precisely what Mathews County residents are being asked to do when they will consider, once again, whether they support a meals tax on the Nov. 8 ballot. However, this time around, they need to say “Yes.”

When the meals tax initiative was on the ballot in Mathews in 2014, the money that would have been raised from that levy would have gone into the general fund, and be subsumed into the overall operating budget, never to be heard from again.

Sure, there’s no denying that Mathews County was and continues to be strapped for cash, and that infusion would have allowed the local government to meet pressing needs and keep pace with mandates imposed on it by state and federal governments. But at the end of the day, it ...