Wednesday, March 21, 2001
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Wednesday, March 21, 2001 |
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Tax equity battle heats up; Cities vow to go to court By DAVE HAMRICK
The smoldering fires of disagreement over tax equity in Fayette County have flared up again as local city officials prepare to take legal action in the controversy. County Commissioner Harold Bost Friday threw down the gauntlet in a press conference with visual aids designed to show that there is no tax inequity, and Peachtree City Mayor Bob Lenox picked up the gauntlet, promising that city officials will soon request mandatory mediation and try to prove that there is. Lenox told The Citizen this week that he looked over a draft of a petition asking the Superior Court to order mediation and has sent it to officials in Tyrone and Fayetteville in hopes of getting the action filed within 10 days or so. "There seems to be unanimity not only among the cities but also among all the elected officials" in the cities, he said. "We owe it to the citizens to do this," said Tyrone Town Councilman Ronnie Cannon. Lenox and Bost both exhort you to "follow the money" in the argument, but they each follow the money down a different rabbit hole. Lenox and other city officials claim that their residents pay more taxes to the county than residents with comparable properties in the county, while receiving less in services for the taxes they pay. Bost and other county officials maintain that an inequity in the distribution of local option sales taxes balances the scales. In his press conference Friday, Bost showed a flare for the dramatic as he unveiled two stacks of dollar bills representing the extra tax rollback that city residents receive from the county's local option sales tax, and he used Lenox's own home and two businesses as the example. Those properties receive a $9,448 sales tax rollback, he said, but if they were in the unincorporated county they would receive only a $3,279 rollback. The stacks of one-dollar bills that mirrored those numbers were Bost's own money, not county money, he said, adding that the idea of the press conference was his alone and other commissioners weren't responsible for it. "It looks to me like it's a pretty good deal for the city taxpayer," he said. Bost didn't invite city officials to the press conference, but someone tipped them off and they were there. Lenox presented his own impromptu press conference in the county administration parking lot afterward. One should not focus on the total tax bill, but the amount each resident pays to the county for maintenance and operation direct payment for services received, Lenox said. The total tax bill includes school taxes and municipal taxes. Yet the city resident receives little in the way of police, fire or road service from the county, Lenox said. But, Bost argues, the city resident also receives a larger sales tax rollback. Sales taxes paid to the city are all used to roll back taxes of city property owners, but taxes paid to the county, based on the population of the unincorporated area, are divided among all county residents, including those within the cities. City residents thus benefit twice, Bost argues. The bottom line, Lenox answers, is how much city residents pay to the county, and how much they get back in services. Although the argument has been quiet for a couple of months now, Bost said he felt compelled to put on his demonstration because of the number of phone calls he gets from residents complaining of the tax inequity.
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