I’d like to add my thanks to Mr. Charles Phillis for his very informative letters and constructive criticism of the way the Lake Peachtree dam issue is being handled. It seems that the city-county is at least appealing the EPD’s classification, no doubt due in some part to Mr. Phillis’s first letter.
I especially liked his latest treatise on the nonsensical permeable/non-permeable method of determining how much we should all pay for the Stormwater Ripoff — I mean “fee” — although I guess they could just as easily have based it on lot size. Most of us know that rainfall doesn’t sink into this crap clay, it just washes it onto your driveway where it never moves another inch until you sweep it up.
I am and have been outraged at this method of funding a new city department to address a problem that has been neglected since the founding of the city. A “crisis”, which I guess shouldn’t go to waste. I presume this “fee” scheme was chosen because raising our taxes requires a vote of the people, so why go through all that when the T-SPLOST was just (thankfully) voted down and they can simply assess us all a “fee”? So they start out pretty small, that satisfies the people who always say “it’s just another penny, no big deal”, then they decide we have to pay more, then pay it twice a year. And of course we can’t deduct it from our federal/state tax — it’s a “fee.”
Last year both the city and county were drooling over the anticipated T-SPLOST revenue. When that fell through, a sudden, unexpected (?) windfall via the new vehicle ad valorem tax saved the day. This year the city has been talking about how they can repurpose the proposed county stormwater “fee” — we’re to be charged twice for the same service — and use the extra funds for cart path maintenance. Another one of those little things that should always have been in the budgetary plans but has been ignored.
What new crisis will be discovered tomorrow (which government should have been handling all along) that will require yet another “fee”? How many more leaky police stations, libraries without the facing attached, unnecessary school buildings or phony bypasses will we have to pay for before the citizens say “ENOUGH” to the “fees” and SPLOSTs and the ever increasing cost of government?
Gary Rettmann
Peachtree City, Ga.
