By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

Residents of unincorporated Fayette County owe their neighbors in the county's cities a little over $2 million a year.

That's the bottom line in a draft reaport from Governmental Solutions Inc., a consulting firm hired by local governments to settle a disagreement over how taxes and services are distributed.

City officials in recent months have complained that their residents are subsidizing services for residents in unincorporated areas, and county officials have countered that they believed county-only residents have been paying more than their fair share.

Amid nervous jokes about which government entities should have brought a checkbook to the meeting, Steve Burnett of Governmental Solutions issued his draft report at Tuesday's gathering of the FUTURE Committee. FUTURE (Fayette United Team to Utilize Resources Effectively) is a group of elected and appointed officials from all of Fayette's governments that has been working for about two years to find ways the governments can cooperate to reduce the overall tax burden on residents.

The “tax inequity” question came before the committee after Tyrone Town Councilman Ronnie Cannon aired his feelings on the matter during a council meeting. Later, officials in Fayetteville and Peachtree City expressed their own feelings that their residents were being shortchanged.

“County-only folks need to pay more for public works,” said Burnett Tuesday, later adding, “We have a tax inequity problem in the Sheriff's Department.”

Slight inequities also exist in emergency medical services as well, said Burnett.

Fayetteville residents are paying $321,424 more in county taxes than they are receiving in county services, according to Burnett's report, while Peachtree City residents are shortchanged about $1.3 million, and Tyrone residents pay $130,505 too much.

City officials objected to the fact that Burnett's study found no inequity in how library and recreation services are dispersed in the county.

Peachtree City residents have their own library and wouldn't logically drive to Fayetteville for that service, said city manager Jim Basinger.

“That's a duplication of services that the cities chose to do,” said Burnett, adding that detailed records simply don't exist that tell how many county library patrons come from within the cities. “I can't prove it's not a county-wide service,” he said.

The same is true of recreation services, he added.

What now?

FUTURE Committee members will begin what is expected to be a lengthy negotiation process next Tuesday at 8 a.m. at the Wendell Coffee Golf Center in Tyrone.

Burnett's recommendations include several options for how to address the inequities, including simply increasing property taxes for unincorporated county residents while reducing them in the cities.

Fee increases for specific services also are an option, he said. “Every dollar of fees would offset a tax dollar,” he said.

The officials also should consider setting up more special tax districts so that the residents of a specific area would be taxed for a specific service, he suggested.

And the county could directly handle more services inside the city limits, he added.

“Additional special tax districts should be used to better account for taxes and benefits as the long-term solution,” said Burnett, adding that a reasonable time to accomplish this would be somewhere around 2002. “You can continue to explore joint ventures in the meantime,” he said.