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E-SPLOST’s anti-senior campaign As I write this column, I cannot help but think of Irene Dunne’s famous quote, “If we don’t stand for something, we will fall for anything.” I chose to preempt the intended column for this week to address something along the same lines which bothers me. I will follow on how the bonds went wrong, key decisions went awry and identifying those who are benefiting from all of it next week. The E-SPLOST for schools vote is creating a moral gut-check for voters. There is a scheme afoot to blame our senior citizens for the failure of two previous school SPLOST attempts in Fayette County. In doing so, the hope is to have young families disregard the failures of the FCBOE and view to seniors as the enemy. Likewise, such a ploy could attempt to embarrass senior citizens into funding the public school system even more. This propaganda campaign is disseminated through a school board member and key members of a group called Fayette Citizens for Children. The political maneuver is necessary since it has become very difficult to support the SPLOST based on the previous argument of school overcrowding and funding issues. I, unquestionably, believe we have a moral obligation to protect our senior citizens, also known as our parents and grandparents. In this day and age, it is certainly a risk talking openly about public conscience or appealing to the populace’s sense of right and wrong. Even our churches will avoid these topics in lieu of softer themes because they do not want to offend some of their unapologetic members. However, it is easy to see there are malevolent forces in our culture who will say do whatever you like as long as you feel good. This movement of self-fulfillment at the expense of others shatters the public trust and creates social ruin. Keep this in mind, for every home where senior citizens reside, you have two less children per home in our school system. Less children equates to less expense and less taxation. Senior citizens are very good for our area for a number of reasons and we need them in our community. There is gossip circulating that senior citizens do not pay school taxes. This is not true. There are certain age levels and income brackets that earn various degrees of exemption from school taxes. Fayette County Board of Education (FCBOE) member Janet Smola started the anti-seniors campaign with an email to the president of a subdivision in Kedron Village. The email has since been circulating all across the county. In the correspondence, Ms. Smola declares the “elderly” are the reason our SPLOSTs do not pass. I hate to hear a local widow, who is just barely making it, say that she does not want to be the reason the children cannot have class. First of all, she is not the reason, and there are plenty of classes. Second, she has paid taxes all her adult life, a fair share. Third, out of respect (anyone remember respect?), we ought to honor our seniors’ hard work and sacrifice and give them any break we can in their last stage of life. Contradicting herself, back in 1999, the same Ms. Smola was the chairwoman of a political action committee designed to ram the then-SPLOST referendum through. The SPLOST failed and Ms. Smola did not blame the senior citizens then as she does now. The truth is she blamed a single person for the failure of the county-wide vote: Carl Avrit (The Citizen, “SPLOST, ethics law, free speech clash,” Feb. 2, 2000; “Ethics Commission cites anti-SPLOST action committee,” Dec. 22, 1999; “Ethics panel hears Fayette case Monday,” Dec. 15, 1999). Mr. Avrit sent computerized calls to homes opposing the SPLOST. To think that one man’s phone calls could have such a devastating affect is a bit suspect, but the cited articles clearly show, “Smola, who believes that the SPLOST would have passed were it not for Avrit’s calls,” made that her excuse (a far cry from her senior-bashing explanation of today). Now let’s discuss the how the FCBOE has lied to senior citizens on the school funding issue. In both the 2000 and 2004 school bond proposals, the following language was widely promoted, “Homeowners who qualify for the county’s elderly homestead exemption on school taxes would also be exempt from the school bond tax” (Plan For The Future brochure, 2000; Fayette County School Bond Support Our Children brochure, 2004). Full disclosure: I strongly supported the 2000 bond issue and passively supported the 2004 bonds with the full intention of not having qualified seniors pay the bond tax as promised. Yes, we the voters of Fayette County made a pledge to our senior citizens who qualified that they would not have to pay the exempt portions of the school taxes. This promise was in our bond literature. This promise is embedded in our tax structure. Now, Ms. Smola, Fayette Citizens for Children and the FCBOE want close to $40 million of the debt service for the bonds to be diverted to sales tax revenues via the SPLOST. Thus, senior citizens who were previously exempt will be forced to pay the debt service for the bonds through sales taxes (and we promised them otherwise). This backdoor tax conversion may not mean much to our young families, but to many of our seniors it makes a somber financial situation worse. Here is where we get back to that issue of moral obligation. Forget about the other issues such as poor decision-making and lack of financial accountability from the FCBOE, and concentrate on this single issue of lying to the elders of our community while we sit back and watch pro-SPLOST personalities blame those same elders for past FCBOE failures. Because this “Last Minute SPLOST” secretly fell from the heavens without warning a week after FCBOE members secured their seats in mid-July, there was no time to discuss the impact it had on our senior citizens. Had the FCBOE thoroughly vetted this SPLOST proposal as they did with the past bond proposals, perhaps we could have developed a solution to this problem. Many of the big names in those political action committees who pushed the school bonds are in the process of absolving themselves of promises made, but not kept. What exactly is the value of our promises? The government could care less, but what about we the voters? We need to protect our senior citizens, keep our promises and express our disapproval of this questionable SPLOST which did not see the light of day until it was too late to have a public examination of its contents. Currently, we have officials at the federal, state and local levels who act as though the laws of the land do not apply to them. We are expected to choke on the consequences of their actions. We, as citizens and voters, made promises to the senior citizens that they would not pay on exempt bond taxes. This SPLOST referendum makes us out to be frauds. How about we do the right thing, the moral good, and keep that promise. [Steve Brown is the former mayor of Peachtree City. He can be reached at stevebrownptc@ureach.com.] login to post comments | Steve Brown's blog
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