Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Three more attack letters and no positions on issues from our opponent last week. That brings the total letters in the last three weeks from our opponent attacking Mike Wheat's campaign to 10 and the position letters are still zero.

We would like to give three cheers for Mayor Steve Brown for his appointment to the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority advisory panel. This puts Fayette County in a better position to compete for the billions of road dollars controlled by the authority. It also reinforces one of the key platforms for Mike Wheat's County Commission campaign: that is taking a "win-win approach" to our problems at the local government level rather than a confrontational approach.

We all know that we have significant challenges to overcome to improve our quality of life. We also know we have great talent in Fayette County on which we can draw to address these challenges. Bringing that talent together on behalf of everyone in Fayette County is what Mike Wheat intends to do. Way to go, Steve!

Our issue of the week is controlling our escalating county property taxes and the cost of government. When Mike Wheat took office as mayor of Fayetteville, city property taxes were $5.30 per $1,000 of assessed property valuation. When he left office, the tax rate was $3.22, a 39 percent reduction.

In addition, during Mayor Wheat's tenure, the city lowered water rates by roughly 25 percent. Mike has shown he is a "hawk" when it comes to controlling costs and will use his experience to do the same as your county commissioner. Three ways to reduce high property taxes are:

· Capping county budget requests based on population growth.

· Negotiating impact fees to be paid by developers for new growth in the county. These fees from future growth can be used to pay for much of the new jail and court offices.

· Eliminating overlapping government services through cooperative efforts among the county government and city governments.

As a quick comparison, since Mike's opponent took office in 1999 on the county commission, he has taken no action to try to lower water rates and he has voted to raise the county property tax rate from $9.21 per thousand to $10.42 in 2002. This is an increase of 13 percent and this is in addition to the increased assessments many of us have received.

Regarding the new jail and court office funding, Mike's opponent approved without a voter referendum a $60 million financing package to be paid by our county property taxes.

Meredith Wynn

Communications Director

Mike Wheat Campaign Committee

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