By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

Fayette's county and city leaders will all get together to hear the facts before deciding what to do about a consultant's assertion that city residents pay more than their fair share of taxes.

FUTURE, the Fayette United Team to Use Resources Effectively, a committee of elected and appointed officials, had planned to negotiate a solution to the tax inequities and then submit the final plan to city councils and the County Commission for approval.

But after beginning negotiations last week, the group decided that those who will make the final decision should hear the facts all at one time, said Harold Bost, County Commission chairman.

“That way we could all be there and ask our questions and listen to the answers to the questions,” said Bost.

County officials probably will have some pointed questions about the methodology used to arrive at the conclusion that residents of Fayetteville, Peachtree City and Tyrone are overcharged about $2 million a year for services from the county government, Bost said.

“Our guys are going to have a lot of questions to justify to themselves to trust the report,” said Bost.

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. Officials agreed to share the cost of a study to determine who was right.

In a FUTURE meeting May 15, consultant Steve Burnett of Governmental Solutions Inc. said his study revealed that the municipal officials were right.

“We have a tax inequity problem in the Sheriff's Department,” he said, adding that inequities also exist in public works, but not in libraries and recreation as city leaders had suggested.

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.

Members of the city councils and County Commission will be checking their appointment calendars over the next few days, looking for times that everyone can get together for a meeting of the Association of Fayette County Governments.

AFCG includes all of the members of the governing bodies, whereas FUTURE members are appointed representatives of each body.