Charles Reddoch from the Henry Herald:
“A millage increase, with the values going down as much as they have, may mean that the taxes will go down, too,” he said. “The value that the millage is applied against has gone down enough, which might, even with a millage increase, result in a tax decrease.”
We’ve been down this road before:
When is an increase not an increase? When you are Henry County.
In the Budget Review Panel meetings many people stated they viewed raising the tax rate and paying less than they did the year before as not raising taxes. I certainly did not agree.
If you have a job where you were paid $50, 000 and paid taxes of 12% or $6000 then the next year you were paid $41,500 and asked to pay $5900 did you pay more in taxes?
According to Reddoch, many of the panelist and quite a few Henry politicians you paid less in taxes. A hundred bucks less. Yet the rate increased to 14%. If the tax rate did not increase you would have paid less in taxes also, $4980. That tax rate increase was nearly $1000 or 18.5% increase. However the county wants to sugar coat it by telling you they did not raise your taxes.
I say Hogwash.
The county will hold a commissioner workshop sometime on Monday telling us how much pain they have incurred and what cuts they plan on having. They will tell about the possible tax increase. Problem is it’s in Room B with no record of the meeting except for what they write down; it won’t have all the theatrics or emotion if there is any. What time you asked? They do not tell us.
My guess is there’s a tax increase coming of at least 2.05 mil because that was laid out in the review panel meeting. With the vast majority of the panel behind the tax increase Fred Auletta most likely will take that as a green light and push maybe higher than was explained. Auletta is not accountable to the voters anymore. Auletta is not a policy maker any more but an employee whose job is to present options for the commissioners to examine then manage the county. Don’t get me wrong Auletta is valuable and his input is needed but he also needs to know he’s not going to vote on the budget, the commissioners will be and they set the policy.
I think I’ll take time off and head over to watch this meeting.
Disclosure: I live in Henry County, own property in Henry County, pay property taxes in Henry County, I vote in Henry County, I support Dale Rutledge for State Representative 109 and will vote against Steve Davis, have been called white trash among other things.
