Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I read with some interest the various reasons for having a meal tax in Mathews. The article relied heavily that a lot of out-of-town visitors would be shouldering the tax burden. I agree that we do have a lot of visitors in Mathews, but take a good look at the folks dining at our local restaurants both at lunch and dinner and most of them live in the county.

These folks support local businesses year round and are not seasonal visitors. When the cool weather of fall and the colder winter weather set in, there are not too many visitors dining in Mathews as compared to the late spring and summer months.

So, who pays the bulk of the tax? Local residents would be my guess. The tax would generate $155,000 per year. It is difficult for me to believe that our county’s leaders cannot come up with this amount of money from another source that is not a tax.

The fact that many counties and cities in Virginia have this tax is not, in my opinion, a great reason for...