If a Frog Had Wings

If only there were someone at the City of Savannah or in Hardin County Government who could read and understand the Tennessee Code. If only there wasn’t the ever present distrust and hostility between these two governing bodies. But then again there is my favorite, that If a Frog Had Wings thing, too.

When it comes to the Tennessee River Resort District (TRRD) designation, what we have is a failure to communicate and it may very well cost Hardin County taxpayers $443,000 a year in slam dunk revenue. Sad but true.

The lack of communication is between the elected officials of the City of Savannah and the Hardin County Commission. When it comes to cooperation and working together, it appears as if the lights are on, but no one is at home, if you know what I mean.

But then again our current county officials, adopting the moto of the former chief executive officer, are not focusing on the future or the present, either. One has to wonder what these folks are looking at, or if they even have their eyes open at all.

Had the City of Savannah NOT elected to accept the TRRD status, Hardin County would have received an addition $443,000 in additional state-shared sales tax revenue in addition to the estimated $213,000 they are projected to receive by the election of the TRRD status.

Let’s see, that would be $656,000, a year based on FY 2005 sales tax revenues, instead of $213,000 in additional revenue for the County, if the City of Savannah was not a separate TRRD, for which they are projected to lose $16,600 the first year. Does that make a lot of sense?

The City of Savannah would continue to receive it’s estimated $443,000 per year in state-shared sales tax revenue, without the TRRD.

The published rational for the City of Savannah to elect TRRD status is that in the future the City will make up the current projected losses with increased sales tax revenue and possibly additional revenue from the sale of liquor by the drink.

Although Savannah is a separate corporate municipality, it is also my county seat and the administrative center for theCounty and should be a source of pride (and jobs) for Savannah.

But then again, based on the experience of the city in their dealings with the county on the 1997 one-cent sales tax increase, earmarked for education, one can understand their reluctance to trust the county to keep their end of any agreement that might have be made.

Again, sad but true.

Respectfully submitted for your consideration.

NEW FRONTIERS
(Bad News/Good News)

The bad news is, just when you think you've seen the frontier of an inept, inadequate and inefficient local county government, we find there is more to conquer.

The good news is, we only have a little over seven months before we can do something about it. That would be the August 3rd, county-wide elections when the voters will, in the privacy of the voting booth, select the folks who will look after our governmental affairs for the next four years.

Scary, ain’t it? That light we see at the end of the tunnel is the opportunity to reform the way our local county government does our business. It is the opportunity to elect folks who respect the will and authority of the people and to not re-elect those officials who try to force their will on the people, after the people have spoken.

For those folks that have expressed concerned for my continued efforts to keep myself informed and to participate, after the recent feeble attempt at character assassination by those folks who support increasing the tax burden on the poor, let me say that I am alive and well. Unemployed, but alive and well.

In the past I have quoted Edward Dowling who observed that the two greatest obstacles to democracy in this Country are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.

Now about this new frontier. It has recently came to light that after years of neglect by the Board of Education in repairing our schools in Hardin County, there has been money in the bank for years to make some of these much needed repairs.

The repairs haven’t been made because of a 1997 tax-sharing side agreement between the City of Savannah and Hardin County Government, that artificially restricted the use of any funds to a self-imposed ‘Phase I’ of the Board of Educations’ 40 year ‘master’ plan.

Back in 2002 there was over $2,000,000 dollars in the bank that could have been used, but for this side agreement, but without even discussing it with the City of Savannah, our County Commission and Mayor decided to repay an extra million dollars principal on the bond debt and not use the funds to make any repairs. Does that make sense?

Does it make any sense that if we have collected more money from the voter approved one-cent sales tax than was required to make the payments on our bonds, that we would not put that money to use for the purpose for which it was collected, to construct and repair our schools?

The Chairman of the Board of Education admitted at the last City Commission meeting that after only eight years, the Board of Education was already at least two years behind in their 40 year master plan. They have not even started the preliminary engineering work for the new North Elementary facility, because they say they don’t have the money.

The proof is in the pudding. All it has taken to proceed to put the long needed new roofs on two of our schools, was a simple request from the Board of Education to the City of Savannah and Hardin County government to amend this tax sharing side agreement to change a definition of the self imposed ‘Phase I’. Well, Duh!!

The questions are, what took so long and why is it going to take, according to the B.O.E.’s best plans, at least another 34 years, if they stay on their self-imposed schedule,to correct this major deficit in our school system?

Respectfully submitted for your consideration.

Uncle Ted