Mayor Logsdon, I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my concern regarding our runaway property tax situation. My intention has been to mitigate draconian tax increases through meaningful and productive dialogue.

I have chosen this public forum because my concerns are germane to all Fayette County residents. Moreover, the issue of overtaxation needs to be brought to the forefront.

It has never been my intention to label you as mendacious, to vilify you publicly or to elicit the acrimony and personal diatribe that has ensued.

You perhaps unwittingly brought some of this on yourself when you publicly disclosed the actual amount of my 2005 property taxes in your response.

Apparently the readership was as unnerved by this audacity as were my wife and I. Some wrote in on my behalf suspecting that this was a deliberate act of intimidation. If this was the case, then what you did is unforgivable (I should also add that I am not so easily intimidated).

I choose instead to believe that this disclosure was merely a faux pas on your part and that your personal integrity would prevent you from acting with such vindictive malice.

Remember, I never mentioned specific dollar amounts but discussed our tax problem only in terms of percentages that could affect all residents of Fayette County and PTC.

While my tax bill is obscene, my objective is tax fairness for all in our community. It was your embrace of this maxim during your campaign that garnered my support as well as that of many of my fellow citizens.

Regarding your response, I thank you for attempting to answer some of my questions, but I still fail to see any justification in imposing tax increases so far above the rate of inflation.

You stated that a CPI increase would fund three police officers. Are you saying that double that amount was necessary just to accommodate one additional officer? This doesn’t add up.

You said that we are seeing positive evidence of SPLOST in road improvements, but I say that the windfall in property taxes should have more than covered these expenses. We shouldn’t have to pay an extra percent on everything we buy when such a windfall exists, and I fail to see why this should have to come from separate tax sources.

You said that “The city’s millage rate increase and the property tax assessments were not a windfall for any entity.” Based on recent tax increases well above the CPI, I couldn’t disagree more. This “windfall,” in fact, was mentioned several times in this paper when you and the City Council were hammering out the budget.

You said that we are federally mandated to have a stormwater utility, but I say that the county should pay this fee out of the tax windfall instead of imposing yet another expense on its citizens.

You also mentioned that the county has been rolling back taxes for unincorporated residents at the expense of municipal residents and that your letter to the county regarding this matter goes unanswered since last June.

I say that you need to write more frequently, pay this agency a personal visit and/or hold them accountable for failing to address this issue.

June was a crucial time to intercede as the county was in the midst of establishing 2006 millage rates that could have provided relief from our high assessments. This was not the time to be a wallflower waiting for a response.

Your office must place a higher priority on unfair taxation from the county lest we have the placebo effect from PTC that currently exists.

This result of this negligence hit full-force this past week when many of us received our 2006 property tax bills. I now fully understand the true meaning of the term “shock and awe.”

Allow me to indulge and note that I write in percentages assuming that my fellow citizens are affected commensurately:

In just one year, my property taxes have jumped a ridiculous 9.71 percent with inflation running (annualized) at 3.8 percent. That’s 255 percent above inflation and includes the .25 mill rate tax hike that you pushed through for PTC residents.

Over the past two years, they’ve vaulted 16.67 percent with inflation totaling just 7.2 percent. This amounts to a 9.47 percent tax windfall or 232 percent above inflation over this short period.

And for those of us affected by the AMT, none of this increase is tax deductible. This also significantly raises the baseline from which future increases, based on percentages, will be calculated.

Mr. Mayor, this is absolutely preposterous. This tax increase represents an extreme failure of our local government to honor the basic, fundamental precept of fair taxation for all of its citizens. You and those who passed on this onerous tax increase should be ashamed of yourselves.

One of my favorite quotes refers to the “Man in the Arena” by the late Teddy Roosevelt. Bearing this in mind, I believe it serves no useful purpose to merely throw stones at or publicly excoriate our elected officials. Again, this is not my intention.

Rather, I feel that it is incumbent upon all of us to provide feedback to our officials, rally behind their efforts on our behalf and, conversely, vote them out of office should our concerns go ignored. Should these ludicrous tax increases go unabated, I would expect precisely that result.

I hope that my writing might generate an epiphany of public awareness and involvement so that Fayette County’s insatiable appetite for taxes might be contained. We should easily sustain the quality of our community with more nominal tax increases that are more in line with inflation.

It is also my hope that you will be working with Jack Smith in the County Commissioner’s office as he has publicly taken a stand against this lunacy. He has also laid out a plan to adopt what other communities have done to control property taxes in the wake of the recent real estate boom. I have every confidence in him that he will actually follow through on his promises.

Mr. Mayor, I hope that this letter and its ensuing public response (hopefully civil in nature) will give you the impetus to more tenaciously address the unfair tax burden being imposed upon your fellow citizens by their local government. I fully support you in your efforts to do so.

Ralph P. Trapaga
Peachtree City, Ga.