Someone Broke The Law
Here are the facts:
1. The 2011 County M&O Budget is scheduled to be voted on September 16, 2010, at the 2pm Board of Commissioners meeting.
2. The “CODE OF PAULDING COUNTY, GEORGIA” states:
ARTICLE I. BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS*
*Editor’s note: Printed in this article is 1975 Ga. Laws, page 2916, as amended, as adopted by the Georgia General Assembly……
Sec. 19. Budget and appropriations.
…… The budget shall then be reviewed and adopted or amended by the Commission at the first regular meeting in August of the year to which it applies, which budget, when so adopted or amended by the Commission, shall constitute the commission’s appropriation of all funds for such year…..
3. The first regular meeting in August took place at 2pm on Tuesday, August 10, 2010. The budget was not voted on or adopted. However, the county M&O mill-rate (tax-rate) was voted on at this meeting and raised by 14.3%.
4. Common sense says you shouldn’t set the tax-rate if you haven’t finalized and passed your budget.
5. The public hearing held yesterday was useless because no matter what happens to the budget at this point, the mill-rate (tax-rate) has already been set in place.
6. Someone broke the law.
Here is the video (sorry for commercial that plays first) from yesterday’s BOC meeting and the response from the commissioners and county lawyer (I start speaking at the 1 hour and 19 minute mark of the video):
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Wonder if Austin took some pay cuts too.
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Way to go, Tom. They broke the law..that is the issue as they did order out of sequence regardless of what they said or the excuses. The attorney should know that too.
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I agree they broke the law and it should not be allowed. Then the tax accessors have the nerve to lower our house values and go up on taxes. This is ludicrous.
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What can be done now? This is just another example of this administration making their own rules. No mr. Austin did not take a pay cut and neither did the over paid County Administrator or Community Development Director!
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So as a citizen and tax payer is there a legal recourse we can take again the elected officials? Can the state level government contribute?
I really thought the “NEW” officials (yes Mr Austin) where different than the last guy(we all know his name).
My thought is this. Taxes are down. We get that. So as an administration, lets increase the amount to cover our on a$$ the current citizens pay to make up for it. Is it not just a matter of time before more start to leave the county?
Thanks,
Fellow Paulding County “Lamb”
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An oversight was made that didn’t allow the budget hearing to be on the same day as the hearing for the millage increase. However, the county did want to afford to its citizens the opportunity to comment. So it made an exception and postponed. Technically they didn’t even have to have a hearing on the millage increase. What would have them to do instead?? Its easy to have 20/20 hindsight. If you disagree with increasing the millage rate please propose a way to balance the budget deficient.
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Tom Milanese Reply:
August 26th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
The 2011 budget was already balanced without a mill-rate increase. We would of ended the year with a 31% reserve. By raising the mill-rate, we will end with a 37% reserve. Either way, the budget would be paid for. By the way, the school board did not raise their mill-rate and will end the year with a 7% reserve. Thanks for your comment. See my previous article w/chart. http://pauldingpundit.com/2010/08/pauldings-mill-rate-increase-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
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I think we should back off on the airport construction until we have intrastructure to handle the extra business and people that it is suppose to bring to this county. Work on getting water for those that live here so we don’t go through what we went through two years ago. Get business back to work here in the county. I see business going closing and vacant building everywhere.
Move the offices in the new administration building to one are two floors and cut the expense of heating and air by turning off the the others floors. Too much unused space at this time being heated and airconditioned and no one at the desk. Look around and see what we are paying for that is not bing used. These are just my thoughts.
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PC CommonSense Reply:
September 4th, 2010 at 9:18 am
What unused space? The second and third floors are at 75% capacity. I have heard this from others, and it just isn’t true.
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I agree with Harry C. there are lots of things we could be doing to cute back on spending . . . like the airport construction, the park that was built down the street from the old court house, red lights at schools instead of using our police for traffic cops, allowing our police to write tickets for accidents, instead of waiting for county and state patrol to show up . . . there are lots of things they could have done to cut back, but like all politicians it’s just not in their blood. The one thing we can do VOTE these bums out of office November2. There are lots of families in Paulding, holding on to their house with their last finger nail, instead of giving a helping hand, it appears Paulding’s Elected want to push them over the clift.
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