EDITOR’S NOTE: Below is a selection of the responses from readers of MDJOnline.com in reaction to recent MDJ stories.

County lukewarm on money saving recommendations …

Anonymous — I just love the headline of this story. An understatement if I’ve ever heard one. How about: “County Frigid to Money Saving Recommendations” or “County Refuses to Consider Money Saving Recommendations” or “County Confused by Money Saving Recommendations” or “County Spits On Money Saving Recommendations” or “County Laughs at Money Saving Recommendations”?

D3BjkDKS — Still waiting to see how they respond to the fact that employees get to bank their vacation and sick time until retirement, when they get paid out at much higher $/hr than they earned it. I don’t know of any private company that would accept that as a policy.

Hjugfuysadgf — County employees do not work for private companies. Try taking you family vacation that was planned a year in advance, and two days after you arrive at your location you are told you have to come back to work at your own expense for one day then you can fly back to your family; again on your dollar. Or you took time off to spend with your family and some emergency happens in the county to some ungrateful citizen and you have to stop everything you are doing with your family come to work.

Mike Jones — It took over 30 years with over inflated home prices and local taxes to get into this situation. Guess what? The housing bubble has popped and home prices are headed south. Cobb County Government is going to have to slash spending, government salaries, pensions and spending. Do they have the stomach for it? I don’t think so. Let’s see them try to raise taxes on folks who are themselves losing their jobs, pensions and benefits.

Anonymous — They better get the stomach. Because a whole lot more non-government worker types (aka “taxpayers) have awakened to the government employment freeload fest that has been running rampant in Cobb County.

Kennesaw Resident — Amen!

Spend our money — Great! Another study at $350,000 to study salaries! And then what? (Commissioner Tim) Lee and (County Manager David) Hankerson raise our millage to raise staff compensation? Glad my recent millage increase is going to really important studies that benefit ALL of Cobb County. The Democrats do not need to find someone to run in the Chairman race — they have Tim Lee!

Family’s ancestors declared free …

D. Cameron — Congratulations on a successful search to right a wrong and obtain a degree of justice. No, we do NOT need to apologize for slavery, BUT we MUST understand and acknowledge and remember the horror, impact and continuing legacy of slavery and injustice. After more than 200 years, you CAN turn the page in a history book, but you CANNOT turn the page on history. Though we are not responsible for actions of the past, we bear the responsibility to right the wrongs and replace injustice with justice.

Virginia Wood — Yeah, heaven forfend they should remind us of our past crimes. But it’s OK, I guess, if white Southerners keep up with their reminders of the war.

“They” — Sorry, but I never owned one. Therefore, no apologies are necessary, required or should be expected for something that began in Africa with the selling of their own population...over 200 years ago by their own people!

Gringo Bandito — What past crimes have I committed?