NO New Taxes

On Monday, March 5, 2001, DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones held a public forum at Cedar Grove High School to discuss the proposed Greenspace Referendum. DeKalb County voters will go to the polls on Tuesday, March 20, 2001, to elect a new sheriff and vote on a new referendum.

Prior to the meeting, Citizens for DeKalb Greenspace sent a mail-out to non-property owners and other voters living in incorporated areas of the county. It urged them to vote Yes for the referendum. In terms of who pays to retire the $125, 000, 000 in county bonds, the greenspace referendum only impacts property owners in unincorporated DeKalb County. People who reside in rental housing, and those living in cities like Decatur will bear none of the cost of the bond indebtedness. According to CEO Vernon Jones and greenspace advocates, the funds from the bonds will be used to purchase land and to make improvements only in unincorporated areas. With public improvements, benefits accrue to the county as a whole, especially expenditures on parks and recreation. Who is to say the funds will not get diverted along the way? It is sneaky and underhanded to make a few people pay for public amenities in this manner. Those who do not own property should not be voting to put those who do in debt. Elderly homeowners and those living on fixed incomes cannot afford to pay more taxes. With the national economy declining, the smart tactic, according to Economics 101, is to reduce taxes. Vernon Jones’ greenspace initiative does just the opposite for certain people.

While Jones speaks in terms of this referendum costing unincorporated DeKalb property owners a small amount annually, i.e., about $1 on every $1,000 in assessed property value, as with HOST, higher appraisals will mean a bigger tax bill. Remember HOST? Property owners thought HOST would reduce property taxes and spread the cost of funding county government to everyone who works, lives and spends in DeKalb through a 1-cent sales tax. Property owners voted YES! However, since HOST’s enactment, property appraisals have soared, and while Jones can say we pay no property taxes to fund county operations because of the 100% homestead exemption, the tax we pay to fund the county school system has doubled for some of us since HOST went into effect. For many South DeKalb homeowners, we have higher tax bills now than before HOST. More important, we have yet to see any promised improvements, i.e., sewers and gutters, sidewalks and bike paths, in our neighborhoods. Taxes went up under HOST, not only because we have a one-cent sales tax levied on purchases made in DeKalb County, we face higher appraisals, which mean higher tax bills.

Remember MARTA? We approved the MARTA 1-cent sales tax, because poor people need public transportation. In South DeKalb, we thought a yes vote meant we would get a train, reliable public transportation and economic development. Large segments of the area’s poor live in this region. We have yet to see anything remotely approaching the promises that led us to vote yes for the MARTA 1-cent sales tax referendum. Moreover, rather than the twenty years we thought we were agreeing to when we voted yes, the Georgia state legislature, without benefit of a referendum, has placed us in MARTA hock until 2047. Our promised train and the benefits of having MARTA go to people in counties where the 1-cent sales tax is not even assessed.

Politicians, whether black or white, engage in doublespeak when trying to get taxpayers to buy into taxing schemes, which give them more funds to spend. CEO Jones is no different from other politicians. Instead of looking at what DeKalb already collects and how that is spent, Jones wants new funding. Like its predecessors, this new funding disproportionately affects South DeKalb, homeowners living in unincorporated DeKalb. Residents of South DeKalb have been complaining for years about the disparities in county funding. Before any additional taxes are levied against us, we would like to see more equity in how current dollars are spent.

Vote NO on the greenspace referendum. This is the time to lower taxes, not raise them. Before assessing more taxes, the county should make good on amenities promised and already purchased. For example, the 7^th District was promised a park to serve the rapidly developing Ellenwood area in the mid-1990s. The money to purchase land was supposed to be budgeted. There is still no park on the drawing board. Our elected politicians say the money is still there, so where is the park? Another painful example is South DeKalb arts and community center funding, which are supposed to be in the budget, a space should have been purchased, so where is the center?

On Tuesday, March 20, 2001, vote NO on the Greenspace Referendum. Now is the time to cut taxes. Certainly, it is not the time for a new tax that disproportionately affects one group. Because it targets property owners in unincorporated DeKalb, the greenspace referendum discriminates against those taxpayers. Remember MARTA and HOST? The 1-cent MARTA sales tax assessed in DeKalb and Fulton Counties are used to qualify for matching federal public transportation dollars to fund services in Clayton and Cobb Counties where the tax is not assessed. MARTA and HOST raised taxes, and the amenities went elsewhere. Vote NO on higher taxes under the pretext of preserving greenspace! Moratoriums on development and higher impact fees are better preservation alternatives in a declining economy. Save someone’s living space! Vote NO on the greenspace referendum!