With city and county leaders

from all over the state looking on, elected officials of Fayette County

and its cities will begin their ground-breaking tax equity mediation Monday.

Mediator Tim Keim will meet

with the governing bodies of the county, Fayetteville, Peachtree City

and Tyrone at 8 a.m. to try and put salve on wounds that have festered

for more than three years.

Last week, Keim met with attorneys

for all sides, who "familiarized him with the situation," said

assistant County Attorney Dennis Davenport.

City leaders have claimed that

their residents pay about $2 million a year in taxes to Fayette County

for services they don't receive, while county leaders claim that the opposite

is true residents of unincorporated Fayette subsidize services for city

residents.

Attempts to resolve the issue

through the Association of Fayette County Governments failed, and a separate

committee charged with fostering cooperation between cities and county

also failed to find agreement.

"We're definitely going

to break some ground here in the next few months," said County Commission

Chairman Greg Dunn. "There's very little case law to go on."

"We are on the leading

cusp," agreed Fayetteville Mayor Kenneth Steele. "There will

be a lot of people watching.

Dunn said leaders in the Georgia

Municipal Association and the Association County Commissioners of Georgia

will be following the proceedings with interest.

The court-ordered mediation

will be the first ever under a 1996 state law that requires cities and

counties to cooperate to save taxpayer dollars, and to eliminate inefficiency.

One wrinkle of the law, the well-known House Bill 489, is a section that

forbids taxing city residents for services that are primarily for residents

of unincorporated areas.

Early this year, the three

cities cited that provision and filed a request for mandatory mediation,

also provided for in the legislation. County attorneys moved to dismiss

the request, saying the cities already agreed to a service delivery strategy,

and should wait to mediate the dispute when that strategy expires.

But a visiting judge last month

ruled that mediation must go forward, and appointed Keim, a professional

mediator, to tackle the case.

"My goal," said Fayetteville's

Steele, "is that, when all is resolved, each resident of the total

community shares, and shares equitably, the costs of providing services

in the county."

Once mediation has formally

begun, the law allows 60 days for a solution to be reached.

Whether that's the end of the

matter is anybody's guess. According to the law, the mediation is not

binding. If any of the parties disagrees with the results, more court

action may result.

Back

to News Home Page |