County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner

On January 15th, 2008, I held my second public hearing  at the courthouse on the SPLOST sales tax referendum.  There were over 150 people in attendance.  There was a small  group in attendance who were campaigning for the defeat of the SPLOST sales tax referendum. The group seemed to be headed by Tony Dyer, the candidate for commissioner. Mr. Dyer not only spoke asking the group not to support the SPLOST, but also handed out a four page typed handout to the group with the last sentence reading” Please go to the poles (sp) on February 5th and vote NO to the S.P.L.O.S.T. referendum.” The following questions are ones that have been asked of me since that meeting.

Q.  Why could someone possibly be against the SPLOST sales tax if they want to be the commissioner of the county. Don’t they understand the importance of the property tax money that can be saved? Where is their leadership ability?
A.  I was shocked and must admit that I have no idea how a candidate for the important position of county sole commissioner could possibly put politics in front of a sales tax that can save the property owners of our county millions of dollars.  From reading his statements, it appears that he is completely confused with regards to government funding.

Q. Mr. Dyer suggested in his handout that we should put all the SPLOST money into the road department and not fund any other county projects. He deducted that then he would take the other county money and pay for all the projects that would have been funded with SPLOST sales tax.  How is this possible?
A. It is not possible.  Unfortunately, he seems to not have a clear financial understanding of how county finances work.  First,  the current SPLOST pays for all the road work that is legally allowed by law.  It would not matter how much was added to the road department budget from SPLOST, it would not increase the other county funds.  Therefore there would not be any additional money available for other projects without raising property taxes.  There would  be no new money and therefore no way to fund anything other than the normal operation of county government. None of the SPLOST funds can be used for anything other than capital improvements. SPLOST FUNDS CAN NOT BE USED FOR OPERATIONS!

Q. If the SPLOST sales tax funds can only be used for capital projects, why would you want to spend it all on roads and bridges?
A.  Here again, it makes no sense to me.  We have an opportunity to vastly improve our quality of life in Union County with the many potential SPLOST projects while at the same time, saving  Millions of dollars in property taxes over the next six years. The $12,000,000 we will dedicate to roads and bridges is much more than any of the other counties our size in the mountain area.  We should be able to adequately maintain our roads utilizing $ 2,000,000 per year,  which is millions more than we have used for the past five years.  We should also remember that the Georgia Department of Transportation  matches a lot of the funds allowing our $ 12,000,000 to probably be equivalent to nearly $ 20,000,000.

So it only makes sense to invest some of the remaining money in our children, families, and workforce to try to provide more jobs for the citizens of  Union County.

Q.  The SPLOST information passed out at the public hearing used different numbers as estimates for the amount of money that will be collected. The county has  estimated $ 31,000,000 and Mr. Dyer estimated $ 18,000,000 to $ 20,000,000. What is the difference?
A. The county utilized professionals to come up with our sales tax projections based on actual data of property taxes that have been collected.  Mr Dyer said that , “I can tell you these are real numbers that I crunched …”  I do not know what kind of number cruncher he used but it needs to be repaired because it is simply wrong based on actual data of past collections.

Q. Mr. Dyer, based on his number crunching, said the county would come up
$ 10,000,000 short on sales tax collections and the taxpayers would have to come up with the money.  Is this true?
A. If we were dumb enough to let that happen, then the taxpayers would be responsible, just as they would be now if I was not a responsible commissioner.  However, apparently, Mr. Dyer has no idea of how the process works.  I carefully explained at the meeting that although the county estimated a certain amount of proceeds from the SPLOST sales tax collections, we are going to look at the economy and make any new adjustments as we go along.  In seven years as your commissioner, and with a long financial background, I have never gotten the county into financial difficulty. In fact, I doubt there is another county of similar size that is in as good of financial condition with so little debt, and  so much to offer to the public in the way of facilities and services. 

In addition to my financial oversight, we have an auditing firm that checks our finances, we also contract with a local CPA firm to review our finances on a monthly basis, and three years ago, I hired a CPA as our accounting director.  All of us together protect the county from making financial mistakes and that will continue. So while Mr. Dyer would suggest that I am setting the county up for financial disaster, it is simply not true.

Q.  In Mr. Dyer’s information handed out at the meeting, he stated that he felt that “all true infrastructure of our county” should be the first priority. Included in his list were many items that are not infrastructure, such as the Clerk’s office, Tax commissioner’s office, land fill, etc. He also mentioned county water and sewer. I did not know the county had water and sewer. Was he correct?
A. Unfortunately, again the information was misleading.  We finance all of these offices in the courthouse with our general operating budget. They can not be funded with SPLOST,  and they are not considered infrastructure. However, water and sewer are considered infrastructure, but the only problem is that the county has no water or sewer and never have. The city of Blairsville has the only sewer system and they also provide water in the county along with Coosa Water Authority and Notla Water Authority. Between these three entities, they have the water rights to serve all of the county except the Suches area.

Q.  Why can’t the SPLOST funds be used to lower our property taxes?
A. Part of them can. The SPLOST projects including roads and bridges, vehicle purchase and repair of  existing structures and adding on to our jail,  can all be utilized with SPLOST sales tax funds and therefore will not require property tax funding.  This will all save property tax money.  However, other projects to provide additional recreation for our kids, saving historic structures and providing avenues for our farming community are all ideal project to be funded by SPLOST and will add to our quality of life. 

Q. If the Wal-Mart comes and we were to collect more than the $ 31,000,000 estimated, what would happen to the extra money?
A. If all the listed projects had been funded and completed, you could apply a portion of the excess funds to roads and bridges.  State law then requires  that the money must first be used to pay any county indebtedness and once done, then the remainder should be used to roll back property taxes.   Lets all hope this is a problem we have in the future.

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