Dear Chairman Herb Frady, Commissioner Robert Horgan and Commissioner Lee Hearn,
Many of the citizens of Fayette County have developed a keen interest in local politics over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, this interest wasnt created out of admiration of your actions.
Our interest in your actions originated out of distrust and a yearning to save the community we hold so dear.
Any budgetary process, whether its your personal finances or the management of a county government, depends upon your ability to make modifications as the economic environment changes.
Our countys revenues were going down considerably over the past several years, but the Smith administration and a majority of this present board chose to proceed on a course of deficit budgeting, no better than our U.S. Congress.
Not only did your three-member majority on the board adopt a budget where expenditures exceeded revenues, but you also created additional expenditures to make matters worse.
Were going to be asked to pay for the WIC program twice, first with our federal taxes and again with our county taxes. We are being asked to pay for the East Fayetteville Bypass twice, first with our local sale tax funds and soon with our regional sales tax funds. You are hurrying to waste tens of millions of our tax dollars on building a West Fayetteville Bypass that no one wants except the real estate developers.
If our county government was a private corporation, we would be bankrupt in just a few years because of bad decision making. But this elected body isnt in the private sector and you can fix your poor decisions by raising our taxes.
The county needs to stop all the double-talk about this millage increase not being a tax increase on a majority of the homeowners. The fact of the matter is that a majority of the homes in this county are valued much less than they were years ago, and because of that, their rate of taxation should also be lowered with that reduction in value. You wont allow the decrease in taxes to happen.
Try telling the family who is upside-down in their home mortgage because the value has plummeted that the right thing for them to do is to pay the same amount in taxes as when their home value was much higher. Try convincing them that your need to keep increase spending is more important than their need to survive in a really bad economy.
On the other side of the spectrum, as best I can tell, it appears that Fayette County businesses will be getting hit with the largest tax increase in a decade. Im sure Walmart and Target will be able to cover the increase, but for our local small business owners, you are pouring kerosene on the fire.
With the economy just barely creeping along, youre giving our local business owners, our friends and neighbors who keep our local economy going, a black eye by raising their taxes as they struggle to keep a business alive.
Nearly everyone throughout the county has the impression that three of you on this board like to run loose with our tax dollars. Your unbalanced budgets, pet projects like the West Fayetteville Bypass, voting to keep us in the regional mass transit plans and your thoughtless proposals like the 2009 SPLOST referendum prove the point very clearly.
And please dont tell us your hands are tied on the budget and the millage increase. Commissioner Brown developed a serious proposal for reducing expenses and shifting funds through HB 240 and you wouldnt even allow him the courtesy of speaking.
If you looked at the proposal that three of you wouldnt let see the light of day, you would have seen that Commissioner Brown was asking Chairman Frady, weeks before the final budget vote, to head an emergency committee to look for ways to apply HB 240 and save the county budget.
Instead of rolling up your sleeves on the budget, you decided to cut off the hands of our homeowners and small business owners.
The people of Fayette County are watching and waiting to vote in the 2012 primary and election. Expect an extreme makeover of the Board of Commissioners.
David Barlow
Tyrone, Ga.
