Sparks

continue to fly as Fayette County and local city

officials try to decide whose citizens are

getting the gold mine and whose are getting the

shaft, tax-wise.

Officials

from the county and Peachtree City seem to have

abandoned the report of consultants Governmental

Solutions Ltd. in favor of figures put together

Councilman Ronnie Cannon, and that has Cannon

fuming.

"As

soon as he made his recommendations, the county

started squawking," Cannon said this week,

referring to the GSL report.

The

report, jointly paid for by the county and all

five cities, suggested that residents of

Peachtree City pay $1.4 million more in taxes

than they receive in services from Fayette

County, and similar deficits occur in

Fayetteville ($313,397) and Tyrone ($118,863).

County

officials took exception to the figures, saying

the consultants considered only a few portions of

the county budget and that a more complete

analysis was needed.

Peachtree

City Mayor Lenox offered to provide a more

complete analysis, using figures from the GSL

report as well as updated numbers from an earlier

analysis he had written, and Lenox completed that

work last week, sending copies to all the

governments concerned.

Lenox's

new numbers suggest that Peachtree City's

residents are shortchanged $3.2 million in county

services, and Fayetteville is short $793,293, but

Tyrone is owed a mere $1,177.

County

Commission Chairman Harold Bost said the county's

finance office is working on a response. "We

agree with some things, disagree with some

things, and now we'll get together and talk and

try to come up with a solution that will satisfy

everybody," he said.

"I'm

tired of it," Tyrone's Cannon said in

response. County and city officials agreed to use

the GSL report to solve the dispute, plus

additional data concerning recreation and

libraries, he said. In presenting the report in

June, GSL President Stephen Burnett said he did

not include those services in the study because

insufficient data were available.

"We're

getting our data together [on recreation and

libraries]," said Cannon, "and let's

hope they're getting their data together."

But

Lenox's new analysis just muddies the water, he

said. "We're right back to where we were two

years ago," he said.

Lenox

defended the new numbers, saying he included

GSL's study and expanded upon it. "I worked

through this thing one step at a time, and I

didn't know what answer I was going to come up

with until I came to the bottom line," said

Lenox.

Tyrone's

deficit came out so low because "Tyrone

doesn't have much of a tax base and they do get

probably more services from the county," he

said.

"It's

not fair to take this thing piecemeal,"

Lenox added, referring to the GSL report.

"I'm not going to cook the numbers to make

Ronnie happy, because that's not fair."

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