Wednesday, February 14, 2001
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Wednesday, February 14, 2001 |
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County drops out of joint planning with cities By DAVE HAMRICK FUTURE is history, as far as the Fayette County Commission is concerned. Commissioners have voted unanimously to drop out of the organization after Chairman Greg Dunn declared that he believes the organization's work is done. "In my mind its work is over," he said. FUTURE Fayette United Team to Use Resources Effectively was formed more than two years ago to foster greater cooperation between county and city governments in Fayette. Although it was actually formed before the state Legislature passed House Bill 489, requiring that local governments formulate plans to eliminate duplication of services and reduce costs, the committee became the vehicle for complying with that law. "It was a job well done," Dunn said in a letter to the mayors of all five Fayette cities. Peachtree City Mayor Bob Lenox disagrees. "It was a job half done," he told The Citizen. "We obviously do not feel that everything has been done. Many serious issues remain to be resolved." Among those issues is tax equity. City leaders argue that their residents pay more in taxes than they receive in services from Fayette County, and the county should either ratchet up the service level or reduce city residents' taxes. Composed of elected and appointed officials from all of the county's governments, the FUTURE group worked out cooperative purchasing agreements and sharing of various equipment, along with the joint use of the county's E-911 emergency center. But in recent months arguments and tension over the tax equity issue and others have been more common than agreements. City leaders have been working behind the scenes since tax equity talks broke down in December, preparing to seek mandatory mediation of their claims. Lenox said Monday that it looks like Peachtree City may take the lead in taking the matter to the courts. According to recent calculations, he said, Peachtree City residents were shortchanged to the tune of about $1.8 million during fiscal year 2000. But it's taking awhile to get the city's legal ducks in a row to file the action, Lenox said. "While it's come close in some other counties, no one has gone through the entire process, and there are not a lot of legal precedents of guidance as to how to go about this," he said. The County Commission late last year declared the tax equity discussion closed, and Dunn said this week that FUTURE's usefulness has ended. "It's deteriorated into a group that likes to discuss problems and throw problems out into the open and try to apply pressure on each other, rather than a serious effort to go in and work out the problems," he said. "The effect," he said in his letter to the mayors, "has been to feed our differences and to make them appear larger than they really are." The cities will continue to meet to discuss their mutual concerns, said Lenox, possibly in the FUTURE Committee forum, or in the Association of Fayette County Governments, "or we'll all just get together for lunch and talk about things." Dunn said AFCG will provide an adequate forum for any future discussions that include the county and cities.
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