Sunday, June 28, 2009, 9:10 AM
Opinion
By Stephanie Ramage
Monday's vote: Why Atlanta must pass the tax increase
The City Council will vote on a tax hike tomorrow, Monday, June 29.
Some, including some affiliated with Campaign for Atlanta and the Fulton County Taxpayers Association, have suggested, ever so gingerly and obliquely, that I should oppose the increase. And since I am, after all, a columnist who writes on such things, my impression is that they would like me to write against the proposed 3-millage-point hike. But I cannot do that because I believe the tax increase is absolutely in the best interest of those who live in Atlanta and those, like me, who work and play in the city.
I respect the principles of those who oppose it. Many of them are smarter and more capable people than I, but I am not sure they grasp the urgency of the situation.
It is fine for those who reject the tax increase on principle to point to the city’s history of profligacy and to say things like “We shouldn’t raise taxes until we know where every dime has gone already”—but I know that the city’s police and firefighters cannot continue to be furloughed, to go without 10 percent of their pay for several more months while some committee is appointed and some investigation undertaken and some consultant hired; they will find other work as soon as they can, and even if they don’t, the already poor city services will become even worse under the dead weight of bludgeoned morale.
I know that there are many residents who are sick of living in fear because there are not enough public safety personnel on the job. They cannot afford to wait for the philosophers of the anti-tax faction to figure out how the city has spent its money so far; they have one hand on the phone, calling a realtor, and one eye on whatever job listings there may be in other cities. I have spoken with many of them, and they are willing to pay what has been described as a $24 per month increase for the average home owner, if it means getting the public safety services they need.
Admittedly, the public safety problem is being used as a vehicle to squeeze money out of the taxpayers--$56 million in additional revenue—$43 million beyond the $13 million needed to end the furloughs for police and fire. But, the additional money will go to alleviate the city’s debt and allow core departments to operate. Public safety will have nothing to keep publicly safe if the city becomes wholly insolvent.
The tax increase is necessary and those who, on principle, oppose it are, in my view, perhaps a little too doctrinaire, too entrenched in philosophical foxholes, to be able to assess the urgency of the city’s condition.
I, on the other hand, was raised Mormon.
I know what you’re thinking: Surely there is no more doctrinaire group on the face of the earth, and, too, didn’t I leave that church a long time ago and don’t I take jabs at it all the time?
All true.
But like just about everyone who was raised in some religion and then, in adulthood, leaves it, I have held onto teachings that have survived the trial-by-fire that has been my life. One of these is the Ox-in-the-Ditch maxim.
A little tedious background: Many of the Mormon pioneers, winding their way to Utah’s alleged Promised Land, used oxen to pull the wagons that carried everything they owned. The journey was horrific. Many died; others became crippled through loss of feet to frostbite. There was an urgency to get to the shores of the Great Salt Lake as quickly as possible to avoid further losses. Yet, despite that, as was dictated by their strict doctrine, they kept the Sabbath. Working, or any kind of commercial trade on that day, was taboo.
So, what were they to do, then, if there were some kind of accident? What if someone’s ox, grown restless or hungry, careened into a ditch on the Sabbath, endangering lives and property? Was it okay to work to get it out?
They gave it some thought and, in the first early glimmerings of the pragmatism for which they would later become rather infamous, the Mormons decided that it was okay to break from their Sabbath principles if the alternative would endanger lives or property.
So, when I was growing up, if my mother realized on the way to church that her car was on the verge of running out of gas, even though she was forbidden from commerce, she would buy gas. Yes, she should have thought of that on Saturday, but it was too late for ‘should- haves’ and if she didn’t stop for gas she’d be sitting next to U.S. Highway 80 with a car full of kids, missing church. That is where clinging strictly and unreasonably to dogma would have gotten her—stranded.
The City of Atlanta is in such a predicament. Saturday has passed. The ox is in the ditch, and lives and property are at stake, as hoodlums, unchecked by an inadequate police force, assault and rob the citizens
Yes, the city’s leaders should have paid more attention, indeed they should have jumped up and down and screamed for answers about how the taxpayers’ money was being spent years ago. The City Council, the council president and the mayor should be ashamed of themselves for not having at least enough spinal material to demand to know how the taxpayers’ money was being spent and exactly what kind of fiscal shape the city was in.
But to those who continue to insist, on principle, that they simply cannot support a tax increase in a city still run by the same people who managed the money so badly the first time around, I would say, first, we do have a good financial manager now in CFO Jim Glass, and even though he will leave by the end of the year, if he is brought in to advise on his replacement, I think Atlanta will be in good hands.
Second, whenever the citizens agree to a tax increase, that agreement is not one-sided. In fact, citizens are never in as strong a position as they are when their elected officials come to them hat-in-hand asking for money. Now is the time to extract public promises from City Council members, the council president, and the mayor to use those tax dollars in ways that are strictly defined by the citizens. They need to go to public safety—ending those furloughs for police and fire; for sanitation workers; to service the city’s debt; and to set aside the emergency reserve that Glass has proposed and every responsible city keeps.
A tax increase should have been unnecessary. But the council rolled back taxes for the past seven years, and now, as Glass has said, Atlanta has a revenue problem. And, no one, absolutely no one at City Hall or apparently anywhere else, has known exactly how the money that was coming in got spent. Glass has only been with the city less than eight months. He wasn’t around for the mauling and pillaging, just for the hemorrhaging.
I am not a supporter of tax increases, but when I weigh the alternative—that the police will continue to be furloughed, that the fire trucks will be under-manned, that the sanitation crews will be short handed and garbage will pile up on the streets, and all the while residents will be looking for an escape route rather than a way to invest in the community—clearly this tax increase is necessary.
Glass has done a stellar job of clarifying as much of the city’s financial picture as we are likely to see clarified, and Atlanta needs to handle its present crisis and then demand, stridently and unceasingly, that the elected officials honor the people’s taxes by giving them the services they deserve in exchange.
No, not all the city's problems will be solved. The police furloughs may end, but there are myriad problems within the Atlanta Police Department which will remain to be fixed. The city's policies need to be overhauled if residents truly want adequate city services. But now is the time to set such a revolution in place, and I do not see how such a thing could be possible if furloughs continue and the city is unable to meet its most basic obligations. At some point, a city can become so buried in problems that no one cares whether they get solved, they just don't want to stick around. So, it is imperative that some improvements, including an end to the furloughs, be made immediately.
If the tax increase passes and the City Council does not honor the fiduciary pact between themselves and the citizens, there is an election in November, a fortuitous bit of timing for voting the bums out. SP