Wednesday, February 28, 2001

You have asked for a response to [Peachtree City Mayor Bob] Lenox's allegations of a tax inequity and I have been trying to compose a brief, concise response. The difficulty is not due to insufficient information or facts. Rather the difficulty is that one cannot disprove the conclusion of one chart simply by printing another one that has different numbers and a different conclusion without supporting the chart with a narrative of information. Unfortunately, this narrative currently runs six pages and quite frankly most people do not want to wade through pages and pages. Instead they want a clear, plain, and direct explanation.

But perhaps we can cut to the heart of this problem. First, you are assuming the facts Mr. Lenox provided are true. The mayor would have you believe that the county is willfully violating House Bill 489.

In truth, HB489 was created to prevent county and city governments from providing duplicate services and thereby charging their citizens twice for those services. The bill required that each county and its cities meet together and work out a plan to prevent such duplication and to submit that plan to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) for approval. Fayette County and all of its cities did meet, repeatedly, over a prolonged period of time and did jointly submit such a plan to DCA. That agency responded via a letter dated August 1999 that the plan was approved and that Fayette County was in compliance with HB489.

Secondly, Mr. Lenox would have you believe that HB489 is being violated because Peachtree City citizens are being unfairly charged county taxes for services that the city is also providing.

Unfortunately, he is wrong again. Georgia Law OCGA 36-70-24(1) states that when a municipality chooses to provide a higher standard of service than the base level of service that is being provided in the geographic boundaries by the county, such service shall not be considered a duplication of services.

Counties in Georgia are constitutionally created; cities are not. Counties are required to provide a basic level of service that is available to all citizens within the county and the cost of maintaining those services is the responsibility of all citizens within that county. As a result, contrary to the premise underlying the mayor's arguments, when Peachtree City voluntarily decides to provide certain services to its citizens that already exist within the county, the basic county services are not suddenly rendered solely for the benefit of unincorporated area residents and the cities are not exempt from their share of county taxes to help maintain those countywide services.

Finally, Mr. Lenox seems to indicate that this is a county citizen vs. city citizen situation and that the county commissioners are out to take advantage of the cities. Three of the five commissioners live within the cities: Mr. Frady lives in Peachtree City, Mr. Dunn and I live in Fayetteville. To imply that we would purposefully choose to charge ourselves higher taxes is asinine at best. Each of us are taxpayers and none of us are so wealthy or so stupid as to want to pay any more than our fair share of taxes either.

I submit that Mr. Lenox is sincere in his pursuit in serving the citizens of Peachtree City, but in this particular matter he is sincerely wrong. The bottom line is simply this: the mayor and the commissioners disagree, period. That does not mean our disagreements and differences of opinion make us villains nor does it mean we don't care. It just means we are all trying to do the job we were elected to do.

Linda Wells

Vice Chairman

Fayette County Commission

A.G. VanLandingham

County Commissioner

Herb Frady

County Commissioner

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