The smoldering fires of disagreement

over tax equity in Fayette County have flared up again as local city officials

prepare to take legal action in the controversy.

County Commissioner Harold

Bost Friday threw down the gauntlet in a press conference with visual

aids designed to show that there is no tax inequity, and Peachtree City

Mayor Bob Lenox picked up the gauntlet, promising that city officials

will soon request mandatory mediation and try to prove that there is.

Lenox told The Citizen this

week that he looked over a draft of a petition asking the Superior Court

to order mediation and has sent it to officials in Tyrone and Fayetteville

in hopes of getting the action filed within 10 days or so.

"There seems to be unanimity

not only among the cities but also among all the elected officials"

in the cities, he said. "We owe it to the citizens to do this,"

said Tyrone Town Councilman Ronnie Cannon.

Lenox and Bost both exhort

you to "follow the money" in the argument, but they each follow

the money down a different rabbit hole.

Lenox and other city officials

claim that their residents pay more taxes to the county than residents

with comparable properties in the county, while receiving less in services

for the taxes they pay. Bost and other county officials maintain that

an inequity in the distribution of local option sales taxes balances the

scales.

In his press conference Friday,

Bost showed a flare for the dramatic as he unveiled two stacks of dollar

bills representing the extra tax rollback that city residents receive

from the county's local option sales tax, and he used Lenox's own home

and two businesses as the example.

Those properties receive a

$9,448 sales tax rollback, he said, but if they were in the unincorporated

county they would receive only a $3,279 rollback. The stacks of one-dollar

bills that mirrored those numbers were Bost's own money, not county money,

he said, adding that the idea of the press conference was his alone and

other commissioners weren't responsible for it.

"It looks to me like it's

a pretty good deal for the city taxpayer," he said.

Bost didn't invite city officials

to the press conference, but someone tipped them off and they were there.

Lenox presented his own impromptu press conference in the county administration

parking lot afterward.

One should not focus on the

total tax bill, but the amount each resident pays to the county for maintenance

and operation direct payment for services received, Lenox said. The total

tax bill includes school taxes and municipal taxes.

Yet the city resident receives

little in the way of police, fire or road service from the county, Lenox

said.

But, Bost argues, the city

resident also receives a larger sales tax rollback. Sales taxes paid to

the city are all used to roll back taxes of city property owners, but

taxes paid to the county, based on the population of the unincorporated

area, are divided among all county residents, including those within the

cities.

City residents thus benefit

twice, Bost argues.

The bottom line, Lenox answers,

is how much city residents pay to the county, and how much they get back

in services.

Although the argument has been

quiet for a couple of months now, Bost said he felt compelled to put on

his demonstration because of the number of phone calls he gets from residents

complaining of the tax inequity.

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