Taxpayer Joanne Reynolds had something to say about the proposed TSPLOST--in a word, No.
With two of the four district commissioners absent and representation from county agencies also scanty—the mayor of Trenton was out with kidney stones, the library manager at a convention—Thursday’s regular October meeting of the Dade County Commission was low in the business department. Still, with a referendum before the voters next month on a new transportation sales tax—a tax the commission has made abundantly clear it could find uses for—the meeting was not entirely without drama.
On Nov. 7, Dade voters will decide whether to pay an extra penny on the dollar on local purchases for theTSPLOST (transportation special purpose local option sales tax) that Georgia counties are now allowed to institute individually to pay for roads, sidewalks, bridges and other transportation projects. District 3 Commissioner Robert Goff reminded all that the TSPLOST referendum will be combined with the Trenton city election on the same date, with all city voting and all countywide early voting to take place in the commission room of the Dade Administrative Building.
In this election, Trenton voters will choose two city commissioners and vote on TSPLOST plus another referendum, one to allow hard liquor to be served by the drink inside the city. Dade County voters have nothing before them but the TSPLOST.
Goff worried that, with just these matters at stake, voter turnout will be low. “City elections don’t usually go very heavy,” he said. Thus, he said, the very small percentage of conscientious voters who do show up may determine the fate of what is for the commission a vital issue. “They can vote it in or out,” he said.
Speaking in his own turn, Dade County Executive Chairman Ted Rumley made no bones about the importance of potential TSPLOST collections to the county. “It would be the best thing that’s happened as far as revenue in a long time,” he said.
The TSPLOST--which would raise Dade's sales tax rate from 7 to 8 cents--could not only prevent an increase of property taxes in Dade but actually lead to a decrease, said the county boss. “That money will be kept here in Dade County,” said Rumley. “We [would] be able to eliminate our road budget.”
The Boss, looking much recovered from his emergency heart surgery in September, reminded the audience that SPLOST of the regular variety, as opposed to transportation SPLOST, had paid for Dade’s new court facility and before that the county jail, and that SPLOST pennies were collected from anybody making a purchase in the county, including travelers buying gas and food as they pass through on the interstate. “It’s the fairest tax you could have,” he said.
District 4 Commissioner Allan Bradford didn’t comment on the tax in his own monthly address to the public, and District 1’s Mitchell Smith and District 2’s Scottie Pittman were hors de combat, not being in attendance to weigh in.
But citizen Joanne Reynolds was, and she stood up during the citizens’ participation part of the meeting to speak up for the taxpayers. “A tax is a tax is a tax,” she tautologized. “Our property taxes have gone up. Our school taxes have gone up. Now we’re asked to vote on another tax?”
She asked the commission how much it would cost to collect the new tax, and what percentage the state would keep. County Clerk Don Townsend said that it was true the Department of Revenue would retain some small percentage of the proposed new tax, but could not provide a fuller reply.
(In that regard,Commissioner Goff complained in his monthly report, as he has before, that regular SPLOST checks coming from the Georgia Department of Revenue, which collects the tax and remits it to the counties, are still mysteriously down. With gas prices up across the board, and Tennessee gas now as expensive or even more so than Georgia’s, sales tax revenues ought to be up. They are not. “We can find nobody who can give us an answer,” said Goff. “Whatever’s going on, it’s down, down, down.”)
But back to Ms. Reynolds' presentation: She said that though out-of-towners might pay sales tax on gas and food while passing through, they didn’t pay the sales tax on her phone bill, propane bill or other sales-taxable obligations.
And while she was swinging she also brought up the so-called “view tax,” which Wikipedia defines as “a disparaging term that refers to the fact that the appraisal of a piece of real estate in preparation for assessing property tax includes aspects of a property that are subjective, such as its view.” She said if mountain dwellers paid a view tax for looking at the valley, valley dwellers should be liable for it for looking at the mountain.
In any case, said Ms. Reynolds, the commission should cut spending instead of instituting new taxes. “Priorities need to be made,” she said.
Moving on to regular business, the commission approved $37,511 in SPLOST for new turnout gear for the Davis Volunteer Fire Department. SPLOST projects, explained Boss Rumley after the meeting, are always defined and listed in order of priority when a SPLOST goes to referendum, but the commission is free to grant SPLOST dollars for needs like this. Dade’s firefighters are unpaid volunteers but SPLOST dollars pay for their equipment, fire trucks and protective clothing. Other county priorities that the commission routinely allocates SPLOST funds for are law enforcement vehicles, buildings and equipment and ambulance service.
(Photo: Casey York asks Commisioners Rumley and Goff for new turnout gear for the Davis Fire Dept.)
The big project listed for the proposed Dade TSPLOST is a new interstate exit north of Trenton, but other initiatives include sidewalks from Trenton to the high and middle schools.
In other business, the commission approved an initiative to combine the county’s Historic Preservation Commission with a similar one formed by the Trenton City Commission. County Clerk Don Townsend, as well as Chairman Rumley after the meeting, explained the move was about going after grant money as much as anything else. Some funding agencies won’t accept grant applications from counties unless they have joined with a municipality.
The main project of the Dade and Trenton historic committees has been the renovation of Dade’s historic courthouse. Those mills are grinding exceeding slowly whether or not exceeding fine: Asked for an update on the courthouse after the meeting, Rumley said the county still has received only one bid on the renovation work and has kept its RFP (request for proposals, or bids) open. “We’re trying to keep it local,” he said, and there aren’t that many contractors interested in this type of work. “It’s a specialty thing,” said Rumley. “We want to keep it historically correct.”
The courthouse reno is also a SPLOST project. Rumley said there was still about $40,000 left of the $50,000 allotted to it in the original SPLOST, though $35,000 had been spent on an elevator to make the old building handicapped accessible. A lot of the money spent on the courthouse was private money, he emphasized. Furthermore, he said, lower-priority projects don’t always get finished during their original SPLOST period. “If it’s a good project, you roll it over and hopefully it [the money] will come in,” said Rumley.
So no ETA on the courthouse yet. Before leaving this matter of SPLOST entirely, The Planet must report that in reply to a question about the status of a proposed reservoir, dam and lake on Lookout Creek, yet another SPLOST project, Rumley said the county is still in the process of looking for grant money. “We’ve got four different agencies we’re working with right now,” he said.
The commission approved $50,000 in SPLOST to put an option on land for sale on Lookout Creek adjacent to the acre or so Dade currently owns there. Now, said Rumley, it’s a matter of finding the rest of the $500,000 price tag for the 65 acres. “It’s just the beginning of it,” he said.
He said he felt good about the project, and that Dade had come scarily close to exhausting its intake capacity during last year’s drought. Water, said Rumley, was another basic need that SPLOST dollars could be allocated for. “You’ve got to have water to live,” he said. “The water authority has $1 million sitting in their SPLOST for anything pertaining to water.”
Trenton, Dade and the Dade Water Authority have agreed to jointly own and manage the proposed new lake.
(Photo: Litter and a concrete base half-covered with foliage are all that remains of the county's old recreation area on Lookout Creek, site of the proposed new lake.)
Another consent agenda item from the Oct. 5 meeting was an amendment to public transit purchasing policy, but Clerk Townsend said this was a formality necessary to update the policy language.
There was a brief discussion, with no action taken or proposed, about replacing playground equipment at the county park. The new equipment will be expensive, the commissioners agreed, but will have to be paid for anyway. “What we had is really gone,” said Allan Bradford. “It’s no good.”
Clerk Townsend said accountants auditing the county had pointed out that the county has acquired no new debt for the past couple of years, clearly a point of pride. He said a seeming dip in the budget would be made up for when FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) kicks in $300,000 for fixing New Home Loop. “You’ve got to spend that money before they reimburse you,” he said.
The Dade County Commission meets at 6 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month in the county Administrative Building.
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