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Ok.. thats overwith.
ChangeDecatur is back. The election is now finished and we can get back to business of Changing Decatur. With a mere 6500 votes cast for Mayor, it will take 650 signatures on petitions to get ChangeDecatur on the ballot.
We are looking for volunteers, speaking opportunities and petition circulators. If you are interested, please email us at info@ChangeDecatur.com.
Watch this site for more information.
The recent Decatur City Council meeting was entertaining if you like a good laugh and being teased. Recall that Mayor O called for two...count em...two tax cuts last fall. One might note how quiet he has been since December 18, 2006 about tax cuts. Why December 18? Well... that was the final day that someone could file petitions announcing their intent to oppose him in the Mayoral election.
Last fall, the Mayor wanted dialogue about cutting property taxes and utility taxes. Lets talk about each for just a moment. When the CEO Garman supported the Mayor's call for utility taxes, apparently, the Mayor was embarrassed by his lack of basic understanding of taxes. What most of us knew, (too bad Garman and Mayor didn't know) was that electricity utility taxes are based on Kilowatt hours and not price of electricity. So... when the Mayor was quoted in his and other papers saying "the city will have a windfall when electricity rates go up..", that was simply untrue. No worries... the idea of cutting utility taxes died on December 18, 2006.
The Mayor and CEO Garman also said they supported reducing the City's property tax levy from $1.27 per $100 of assessed valuation to $1.24 of assessed valuation. APPLAUSE! They did lower the rate. But did they lower property taxes?? DOT!!!! The game that Garman plays with voters is that he knew that the assessed valuation was going up on many homes and businesses in Decatur. In fact, it is going up nearly 5% this year. Guess what. More money will be taken out of the community this year in property taxes than last year. The City just gave itself another 4.5% raise. Is Garman on incentive pay where the more taxes he confiscates, the more he gets paid? Perhaps.
But here is the fun part. Councilman Caulkins called for tax relief last Monday night (4/2/2007) as part of the City's annual budget (for fiscal year starting May 1, 2007). He was almost run out of the Council Chambers by the Mayor, Councilman Laegeler and CEO Garman. The CEO said that the only way to cut taxes is "with draconian cuts in city services". Laegeler said that it isn't the right time to even talk about taxes with a mere 29 days to finalize the budget. If you listened carefully...the Mayor was really saying "everyone wants to cut taxes"... just none of us are ever going to do it.
WE AGREE. This is not the time to talk about it.
THE TIME TO CUT TAXES WAS ONE OR TWO YEARS AGO.
Garman and the Council enacted millions of tax increases in 2003 under the guise that they are "temporary".
Wake up call. There is nothing temporary about 4 years of tax increases with no end in sight.
Another reason that now is the time to change. It is time to "CHANGEDECATUR"
