County Commissioner's
Office
County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner
Questions December 12, 2007– SPLOST
continued from last week
Q. How will property
taxes be impacted if we do not vote on the SPLOST?
A. $12,000,000 of the $ 31,500,000 estimated to be collected
with SPLOST over the next six years is for roads and bridges ($2
million per year). That is money that will have to come from either
sales taxes or property taxes to continue to build and maintain the
county road system. It would require a county tax increase of 38%
to make up for this amount of money.
Q. When you tell us that if we do not pass a SPLOST our
property taxes will increase, I feel like you are trying to intimidate
us into passing the sales tax.
A. That is not correct. While it is certainly part of the
SPLOST equation, if I do not point out the obvious, I am not doing
my job. If the SPLOST failed and I had not mentioned the property
tax consequences of its failure, then I would have done a very poor
job of keeping you informed. So therefore, you should know that we
can either pay for roads and bridges via property taxes or by SPLOST
sales tax. With the sales tax, everyone that comes through Union
County spending money helps pay for our roads and bridges. However,
my job is not to promote the SPLOST one way or the other, but to
present the facts about the SPLOST to the public.
Q. I saw the list of projects
that the county is proposing with their SPLOST. Times are
hard and I think we should be cutting back on all expenses. Do
you agree?
A. No. I understand your thought process and normally might agree
with you. However, if we all cut back and quit spending completely,
we will assure ourselves of achieving a full fledged recession. I
think in hard times government has to step up and provide leadership. We
saw an example of leadership this past week when the President said
that he wants all mortgage companies and banks to freeze interest
rates to protect many of the existing homeowner’s rates from
driving them to foreclosure. This is a time when we need to
be helping our citizens, many who are out of work or have very limited
work and income.
Q. How do you propose to help our economy with the SPLOST?
A. It is fairly simple. We want to try to provide as many
jobs for our citizens as possible. Most of our SPLOST projects
involve building or remodeling. There are several opportunities for
the county to save money by renovating existing buildings that we
would have to normally spend property tax dollars on, but will now
be able to use SPLOST funds. At the same time we will have the opportunity
to put people to work renovating and restoring several of our existing
buildings as well as adding some new ones. We will need building
supplies, plus many different construction trades, including carpenters,
plumbers, painters, electricians, heat and air, concrete, and the
list goes on and on. Renovating several of our buildings will
save taxpayer’s money and help put some people to work.
Q. Do we really need a new farmers market? It
looked like the courthouse parking lot worked well or we could
simply use some other parking lots around.
A. Could we get by without the farmers market? Certainly
we could. But if we have an opportunity to put it in a permanent
location, this will be convenient for everyone and hopefully
provide more encouragement for the farmers to increase their crop
sizes. We will be doing a real service to not only our citizens,
but we are encouraging more people to farm. There is no better “green
space” program than that of farming, because the more farms
we can keep in production, the fewer farms that will end up as developments.
Farms also require the least amount of county services for the taxes
they pay. The more farms in a county the better off we will all be
in the future.
Q. Will the proposed
farmers market be all that we have in this location?
A. No. It will also include a covered
show arena for cattle, sheep, hogs, etc. This will have
a dual purpose in that it will allow us to have professional
livestock shows and sales,
but it will also provide a great location for our 4-H kids
and Future Farmers of America to expand their education and livestock
skills. Here again, we are encouraging future farmers and many of
our 4-H programs.
In conjunction with the school system,
as part of this facility, we will also build room for a new canning
plant. The school
system will provide the equipment. This joint effort will replace
the current canning plant that has been in use for over 40 years.
It had to be closed last year due to the condition of the equipment
and building. Here again, we will be able to encourage more
farming and especially gardening and will be able to teach many locals
and new arrivals to our area how to “can” and preserve
food. This is all very exciting and assuming we get more rain
in the future, we look forward to more and larger gardens in the
coming years. There is no healthier food than fresh out of the garden.
Q. Where will the new farmers market be located?
A. Remember that our proposed SPLOST projects are to cover growth
for the next six years. We are negotiating for a site, but
do not have a definite one under contract yet.
SPLOST Con’t next week.
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