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Expect more tax increases as our local governments have to vote on the fiscal year 2025 budget this summer. The local governments excel at spending our tax dollars, doing little to build efficiency.
Can’t see the red flags?
After taking a beating during the coronavirus pandemic, consumers are enduring soaring cost of living increases. Do local elected officials care? Can they look beyond themselves?
The economic red flags on inflation are everywhere. Rents are increasing. Grocery prices are still escalating. Credit card debt is at an all-time high. Interest rates are high. Shrinkflation is a reality.
Many cash-strapped residents have not seen a salary increase. However, some of our municipalities and the board of education have taken more money from our wallets and given their employees generous raises and bonuses.
Most people would think continued inflation leading to even more pressure on every family’s budget would lead local governments to immediately find ways to rein in spending and not increase our taxes.
Well, the plight of the taxpayers appears to have had little impact on the budgetary decisions of our elected officials and bureaucrats in the past as our taxes have consistently been increased (see: https://thecitizen.com/2023/08/07/opinion-another-year-another-tax-increase-from-local-governments/).
Government smoke and mirrors
When your local elected officials tell you they are not raising taxes, but will maintain the current millage rate, it’s a tax increase. Our property values consistently increase and if the tax millage rate is not rolled back to reflect the increase in property value, this is accurately called a tax increase.
Do you remember when Peachtree City Mayor Kim Learnard told the news media that new large city employee bonuses, pay raises, and increased pension payments “won’t cost taxpayers a cent,” and then she raised taxes double-digits for fiscal year 2024? (see: https://thecitizen.com/2023/04/10/mayor-misleads-about-cost-of-city-pay-raises/) We shake our collective heads.
To the best of my knowledge, not one elected official in Fayette County has publicly asked how the local government can find ways to rollback the millage rate and prevent a tax increase. Have they forgotten their fiduciary responsibility to the constituents? Is it too easy to spend other people’s money?
Where are all those elected officials who stamped themselves “conservatives” as they asked for our votes (see: https://thecitizen.com/2024/02/05/where-are-the-conservative-politicians/)?
Do they understand local government?
Municipalities’ core responsibilities are public safety, emergency medical services, municipal courts, recreational infrastructure, and public works (streets, sewers, etc.). How efficiently are those departments running?
Everything the city does beyond the core services should be required to go through zero-based budgeting, justified, and approved in each new fiscal year.
If the elected officials will not do it, how about forming a committee of knowledgeable citizens to take a deep dive into the government budgets, looking at eliminating nonessential processes and duplication, asking department directors to find waste, examine reorganizing systems, determine if there are non-essential or low-performing employees, and creating a laser focus on citizen expectations?
Do they care about the constituents?
The elected officials and the bureaucrats may not get out much in our community. We have families that are making it paycheck to paycheck, cutting expenses. We have single moms and senior citizens whose situation has gone from bad to worse.
Looking at the recent double-digit tax increases, I wonder if they ever notice anyone else. Perhaps, they should volunteer at the local food pantries, Meals on Wheels, and non-profit thrift stores.
Of course, we also have some families doing quite well, thank God, and I am certain they would also like to keep more of the money they earn.
We will see how much they truly care in the upcoming budget hearings. State law mandates public hearings for the budget, and the local governments cannot stop you from speaking on this topic.
[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. You can read all his columns by clicking on his photo below.]
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