By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

Now that the Pandora's Box of tax inequity has been opened, it may be some time before it is closed again.

“I expect there will be several more meetings to discuss this,” said Fayette County Commission Chairman Harold Bost following a meeting of the Association of Fayette County Governments to discuss tax issues last week.

AFCG was chosen as the best forum for all of Fayette's city and county elected officials to hear a consultant's suggestion that city residents in Fayette pay a little over $2 million in taxes to subsidize services in the unincorporated areas of the county.

The alleged inequity amounts to about eight tenths of a mill in property taxes, or about $57 in taxes on a $200,000 home.

As might be expected, county commissioners had the bulk of questions for Steve Burnett, consultant with Governmental Solutions Inc.

Burnett was hired jointly by the county and cities after Tyrone Councilman Ronnie Cannon voiced the opinion that the town's residents were being shortchanged in county-wide services, and officials in Peachtree City and Fayetteville later joined in the refrain.

After studying the services and tax structures of all the governments involved, Burnett said city residents are overtaxed, mainly for services from the Sheriff's, Public Works and Recreation departments.

Central functions of the Sheriff's Department, like the jail and administration of the office, should be paid for by all county residents, Burnett said. But traffic and patrol services go mainly to county residents, and shouldn't be included in city residents' tax bills, he said.

Commissioner Greg Dunn questioned that assertion. “You're saying that the Sheriff's Department never renders assistance to the city police?” he wondered.

The few times that sheriff's deputies are called for incidents within the cities, Burnett said, all are requests for help getting into locked cars, he said. The Criminal Investigations Division never gets involved within the cities' jurisdictions, he said, and the Traffic Division is 93 percent county-only.

Commissioners said they want to double check those findings with Sheriff Randall Johnson. “We want to satisfy ourselves that the allocations of expenses at the Sheriff's Department and the approach taken are acceptable to us,” Bost said after the meeting.

Likewise, Burnett said, the county's Public Works Department maintains many collector roads and thoroughfares, and those costs should be born by all county residents. But maintenance of subdivision streets in the unincorporated area should be paid for by county-only residents, he said.

But Bost told The Citizen that Burnett is using the same expense figures for both kinds of roads. “It costs a heck of a lot more to maintain a mile of that sort of road [major highway] than it does a subdivision road,” Bost said.

City officials, on the other hand, have objected to Burnett's characterization of library and recreation services as “county-wide,” since Peachtree City and Tyrone both provide their own libraries, and all three cities provide recreation. But that's their choice, Burnett said. And there aren't enough records of who is using those services from which areas to prove that they are county-only, he said.

Officials will probably begin the process of negotiating a solution to the conundrum Burnett has given them in mid-July. A meeting of the FUTURE (Fayette United Team to Use Resources Efficiently) will be called as soon as it can be arranged, he said.

“Overall I think it's a good process,” Bost said of the discussions. “We're all after the same thing — tax equity.”

But he added, “I really don't anticipate having to sit down at the very end and write a check. Relations between the county and city are the best they've been in recent history,” he added.

Once the city and county leaders agree on how much inequity actually exists, they may be able to negotiate joint services and special tax districts as a way to even things out, rather than having to increase taxes in the unincorporated areas and reducing them in the cities.