Monday, June 29, 2009, 6:00 PM
Opinion
By Stephanie Ramage

POLICE FURLOUGHS WILL END JULY 10, BUT THE TAX BATTLE HAS JUST BEGUN

Atlanta’s insufferable public safety furloughs—the reason so many police and fire personnel are not to be found on Fridays—will end on July 10. 

That’s the first Friday when all hands will be back at work, according to Chief Financial Officer Jim Glass. 

One would think, given my constant kvetching on the topic, the high anxiety among the police officers and fire fighters, and the loud protests of the crime-chewed neighborhoods since Mayor Shirley Franklin instituted the furloughs last December 25, that there would be dancing in the streets now.

One would think that I would be posting something like, “WE WON!” and arranging to have margaritas with the city’s now-happy badge-wearers.

But one would be wrong. 

Make no mistake, I am pleased the FY 2010 budget with its supporting 3-millage-point tax increase passed City Council today. And those City Council members who took such a brave stand in an election year deserve recognition. They were:

Carla Smith, Ivory Lee Young, Jr., Natalyn Archibong, Anne Fauver, Felicia Moore, C.T. Martin, Joyce Sheperd, Ceasar Mitchell, and H. Lamar Willis.

Atlantans should thank them for doing the right thing for the safety of the citizens. 

I myself am not a fan of taxes, yet I pushed for the increase so the furloughs would end.  

(I even—no, it wasn’t an optical illusion—shook the mayor’s hand during the council meeting because we were, after all, both in favor of the increase.)

But, ending the furloughs is not the end of the matter. Yes, the police, the firefighters and even the sanitation workers will get back to work full time in July, but keep in mind that the Atlanta Police Department will still be understaffed and the Department of Fire Rescue will still be subject to brown-outs—rolling closures of fire stations.

In fact, tucked away in the sheaf of pages that detail the budget the City Council passed, there are cuts to public safety. The APD will lose 66 sworn officer positions. 

The International Brotherhood of Police Officers is relieved the furloughs are ending, says Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of the local union chapter, but the cut positions will “continue to impact out ability to ensure our department has the proper manpower to fight crime in a city the size of Atlanta.”

The positions are not filled—the APD has not been fully staffed in years—but they are funded, and in doing away with them, the mayor, whose budget this was, and the Council, who passed it, are signaling their hopes for landing a federal grant that will pay for more cops to be hired. 

That’s a gamble. 

Whether they’re looking at Obama’s general stimulus package for cities or at the Department of Justice’s COPS grant, the fact is, money is tight and the process for grants has never been more competitive. Considering the APD’s lack of innovative programs, I would be very surprised if the city lands funding from either source to any significant degree. 

Ending the furloughs was a step in the right direction. But, it was only a first step. What lies ahead of the City of Atlanta is a battle for funding against two behemoths that suck up much more tax money than does the city: Atlanta Public Schools (which takes more than 50 percent of all tax revenues gathered from residents) and Fulton County, which takes an additional 25-plus percent.

Ironically, of the three government bodies, it is the city that responds most directly to the needs of the residents. 

As Councilman Ivory Lee Young Jr. said, the city’s residents turn out in the Council Chamber to voice their feelings, and yet, “When the entity that gets more than 50 percent of the taxes meets, their chamber is empty. And the other entity that gets about 30 percent, when they meet, their chamber is empty.”

The school system is traditionally a sacred cow, so Young showed some spine in speaking up about it.

It’s as if, where schools are concerned, there should be no limit to the amount of money citizens fork over. But given the feedback that residents gave me last week in Kirkwood, saying that students from Crim High School roam the neighborhoods and that enforcing truancy laws against them is just about impossible because it’s an “open campus”—I think it’s high time to take a look at the relationship between schools and public safety, and public solvency. 

Fulton County’s longtime profligacy is notorious, and yet the county continues to harvest more than a quarter of Atlanta’s tax money. Fulton County, too, has been something of a sacred cow as any suggestion of malfeasance has been met with accusations of racism. 

But this is no time for sacred cows. 

For while we may entertain ideas about a commuter tax—a measure that might actually backfire against the growth of the city—an overhaul of how existing revenue is sliced up between APS, Fulton County and City of Atlanta would be the most direct route toward greater financial stability. 

That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about kids or education. I do. But I am not sure that the amount of money Atlanta’s taxpayers spend on the schools is justified.

And wanting to reduce the amount of money collected from Atlantans by Fulton County doesn’t mean that I’m a racist. I’m not, at least I certainly hope I’m not, and when I think of all the people of color who are suffering in Atlanta as a result of Fulton County’s disproportionate tax share, it seems unlikely that I am.  

It is time to free those cows from the temple. It is time to fire up the grill. SP

Great article! These "cows" are all related! We need great schools to do their job and educate our kids to be productive citizens and not criminals stealing our flatscreens! APS spends much higher $$$ of taxpayers to 'educate' the kids. Not only that, but all these APS '"transformation" efforts are costing big time bucks! 15-20 Million from GE and as well as millions from the Gates foundation. This is ludicrous! http://www.atlantapublicschools.us/18611010817620610/site/default.asp Let's call it the way it is! Poor performing school and high taxes! Screw all the accolades and PR for Beverly Hall.

Grant
Monday, June 29, 2009 at 8:51 PM

Agreed that APS and Fulton County provide far worse value for our taxes than the city does.

Stephanie, please shine your spotlight on the secret that all three entities are in the developer subsidy business. They divert taxes to developers through tax allocation districts and abatements, as well as failing to collect massive amounts of unpaid tax, mostly from commercial property owners, I suspect.

Candidate for council at large seat Aaron Watson hilariously personifies this. His tele-campaigner boasts how he has chaired the school board, served on Atlanta Development Authority and helped get the Beltline going. For many APS board members school performance is incidental to the real mission of diverting tax to TADs.

Anyone doubting that should recall how, once we'd voted for school tax money to go to the Beltline, APS turned right around and demanded that the penny sales tax for schools stay in place another four years. That's why Atlanta has the highest sales tax in the state.

Council members are no better than the school board in this respect. Despite years of alarmingly flat revenues in a fast-growing city they have never acted to keep property and sales tax flowing to fund operations. We need wholesale change.

Julian
Monday, June 29, 2009 at 9:24 PM

Ugh I am so pissed I was out of town for the coming days of this Budget approval. I do not support the Tax hike one bit.

I do not understand how a commuter tax could backfire against growth either. If anything it's an incentive to live here to avoid it. Commuters do not contribute whatsoever to the services they consume while being here. They should be seen as a burden with our current tax structure. Population growth has also not translated into revenue. Increasing property taxes also makes this City less attractive to live in.

We will now be paying 2002 property taxes with the same public safety staffing we had in 2002 only we have 25% more people in the city.

No other surrounding county is dealing with negative revenue growth or an unbalanced budget. The Mayor does not deserve a handshake for supporting the Tax hike Stephanie!! You said it yourself that the furloughs are only a fraction of the gap she is trying to cover.

I miss one week of Atlanta and I feel like we fell into Shirley's punch while I was away.

Turner
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 7:17 AM

Hey Turner, you're a very lucky person if you pay 2002 taxes in 2009/10. Many of us will pay twice the city property tax that we paid in 2002, thanks to soaring assessments. But you knew that already!

Look, Stephanie is right: the city is close to bankruptcy and has to have more revenue. The 3 mills were inevitable unless you wanted more cuts in police and fire. The tragedy is that we did not use this crisis as an integrity moment to impose controls on tax giveaways and to roll back irresponsible pension increases. Those are what produced the crisis and until we have honest leaders who deal with this, we will see ever more millage increases.

Julian
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 11:04 AM

Fiscal responsibility. How did a City this large, with the tax base that has grown so fast, with all the businesses that call it home, all the building taking place everywhere you look, get to be so poorly run? I think it would be an eye opener if the citizens could actually see how this money is being spent. Transparency might get more than a few of our leaders in trouble, or at least raise some large questions I think. Too long the citizens have just gone along with the same tired group leading us. No new thoughts, just business as usual. I was told at the last meeting I attended that the City has never actually had any money...........seriously. Council person told me that with a straight face. This City should be one of the greatest places to live, work, and visit, but the City leaders are making it a place no one wants to come back to. New leaders with a desire to actually make a change and start a legacy of inspiration and development within the City are needed.....good luck finding them though. We will see what the next four years bring this City and where we stand after them. Shirley promised a lot of things and looked like she was going to bring real change, but in reality has just shown she continued much the same as previous administrations. Smoke and mirrors.

rob
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 1:10 PM

Rob, Yes, we've had rapid growth from 2002 to 2008. But the city did not take in more revenue as a result. Both property and sales tax revenue has stagnated. Why? Because mayor and council have given away the revenue streams to developers through TADs and abatement deals and massive uncollected taxes. And we had millage reductions, too. Meantime they gave out a 50% increase in pension benefits per year of service, sending pension expense through the roof.

So we really don't need creativity - we need integrity and financial common sense applied on behalf of residents.

Julian
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 1:54 PM

This city will continue to be poorly run until the someone breaks the chain of "leadership" that's been in place since the 70's. The powers that be select a candidate, that candidate gets all the big endorsements (we all know who they are) and waltzes into city hall. Don't believe me? Pull out some old campaign materials listing supporters and take a quick look.

Then there's the business community that is crucial to a candidates success. Who exactly is the business community? Is it the little guy with a shop in Little 5 Points or West End? Corporate CEOs? Developers/construction companies? Big law firms? In an ideal world it wouldn't matter who won an election because the city would provide provide efficient and cost effective services no matter who sat in the mayor's office. But in reality it's about funneling contracts to the same small group of firms. Look around sometime. A small of group of 5 or 6 white cos. and 2 or 3 black cos. get every construction contract that comes out of Atl. of Fulton Co.

I can think of several major school renovations and one new school building that were totally unnecessary. But what better way to shovel a load of money to a favored contributor than build a multimillion dollar school for "the children." Meanwhile, real learning improves not one scintilla.

robert
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 3:34 PM

Robert don't forget about the dominating library system we have. I think Fulton County plans on putting 9 more up this year.

Then there is the Mental Health budget, what that's for is anybody's guess.

And lets not forget the Arts. Can we require major Arts Organizations to at least try and make more than 10% of their revenue's from ticket sales otherwise we stop pissing away millions on art that is not from here.

We could do a lot more with this City if we were able to use the Fulton County budget for things that might actually pay for themselves, god forbid.

Turner
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 5:36 PM