Decatur Metro

Feeling the crunch after getting your latest property assessment from the county? ( I know I am) Well then Decatur residents, you should be following this story very closely.

DeKalb County and its cities will again do battle before the State Supreme Court today, as the dispute over the disbursement of the 1 cent sales tax continues into its 7th year.

The story behind this case is long and complicated, but exceedingly important to citizens of Decatur. The AJC article is a good summation, but I’ll hit the high points in case you don’t want to click over there.

Back in 1997, residents in DeKalb voted in favor of a 1 cent sales tax hike to ease property taxes. 20% of that $ was to be used for capital improvement and the county and its cities agreed to share it. All was dandy until the county decided it didn’t like that idea and reneged on the agreement by shortchanging the cities of their share. (Decatur is now owed nearly a half-million dollars [an inside source puts it at $8 mil!] at this point).

The cities, led by Decatur, (who else?) got ticked off and sued the county. The county argued unsuccessfully before the GA Supreme Court that they didn’t have jurisdiction to enter into the agreement in the first place ( Ha! I can see it now….”We didn’t know what the hell we were doing! Please don’t make us pay these stupid cities!”) and the cities notched a win.

However, the county REALLY didn’t want to pay up since they had already spent all that sales tax cash, so they changed tactics and again fought off the cities by arguing that the agreement was invalid because it wasn’t detailed enough. With this argument the county won the case at the lower levels…so now the cities have appealed their way back to the state Supreme Court for a second time.

Well today is the day the court hears the case. And then we wait for their decision some time in the next 6 months. Justice may be blind, but she’s also purposefully sloooww. Even then it might not be settled and again get thrown back to lower courts to iron out details. But this is a big day for DeKalb’s cities.

Let’s hope the court decides in our favor, because according to our mayor, getting this sales tax money and annexation are the only ways to decrease our ever-increasing property taxes (as it mimics growing property values). And I’m a bit skeptical of the feasibility of annexation in its current mix of residential/commercial.

Come on people!  Why do we get all worked up about a potential annexation, but no one makes a peep about $8 million we are owed!?

If the mayor posts anything regarding this dispute, I’ll make sure to link to it here.