A Tale of Two Cities…Sorry, Consolidated/Unified City-Counties

Consolidation and merger between city and county governments must be a popular topic in the Chattanooga/Northwest Georgia area. Current Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield is a proponent of the merger of the Chattanooga City and Hamilton County governments. There’s been some consternation about this from residents of Hamilton County that live outside of Chattanooga-proper mainly because of recent property tax hikes by the Chattanooga city government. There’s talk about the benefits of consolidation through the reduction of duplicated services between the city and county governments, but some are wondering if those who are “pro-consolidation” are really and truly advocating it because of its benefits or just another grab at power. Not to mention, Hamilton County leaders are not totally sold on the idea.

Hop on I-75 South and head towards Dalton and Whitfield County. They’re talking about consolidation too, but the picture looks a little different…make that vastly different. The City of Dalton and the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners agreed to ask the Georgia General Assembly to draft a charter that would transform Whitfield County into a metro government. They’re working together and seem like they’re trying to do what is in the best interest of their citizens.  I don’t know if Mayor Littlefield’s motive is to reduce the cost of government or to increase the tax base, but I do hope he has the citizens’ best interest at heart.  From what I can tell, however, it seems to me like Mayor Pennington really does want to reduce spending in Dalton’s government. They have to, and Mayor Pennington has proven that he is capable of doing just that:

The self-proclaimed “change agent” said he ran to fix the city’s “spending issues,” which he said plague government at all levels.

“Dalton had started getting down in the mouth, and people were saying our best days were behind us,” Pennington said in a recent interview. “I just don’t believe that. I knew one of our problems is that we are taxed to death.”

Before deciding to run for mayor, he had seen Dalton’s tax revenue rise from $9.9 million in 2000 to $12.7 million in 2007. Under his leadership, the tax levy has been reduced to $9.6 million, city records show.

In all, the city has cut taxes by 24 percent since Pennington took office. Most of that came through staffing reductions, benefits changes and elimination of some city services.

Pennington went after agencies that often are sacred cows, such as the fire and police departments. He reduced the police rolls from 107 to 95, cut $300,000 from the fire department budget and eliminated a costly pension plan for new hires.

The result has been an improved city financial picture and a lighter burden on taxpayers.

…

Meanwhile other cities, such as Chattanooga, hiked taxes and created new fees to shore up funding gaps as plummeting home values starved city coffers of revenue.

And Pennington is not done yet. His ultimate goal, if he runs again, is to turn Dalton from one of the highest-taxing municipalities in Georgia to the largest city in the state without any property tax at all. The city levies about $9.6 million annually in property taxes. It also earns about $9 million in profits every year from Dalton Utilities, the city-owned power, water and natural gas company.

I applaud the Mayor’s fight to reduce spending. He’s gotten a lot of heat for his stance, but that’s leadership.

I know people’s first reaction may be negative (especially those citizens living in unincorporated areas) and probably believe that the city just wants to control the entire county. That may be possible, and I wouldn’t doubt that there are some elected officials who would want to expand their fiefdoms. However, voters should consider the pros and cons before writing it completely off as “a way for the City of X to take total control of Y County”. What will be really interesting is to see which way the property tax rates will go:

Dalton City Council and the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners met Friday and Saturday with experts from the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Local Government to discuss a possible merger.

What they learned is that Dalton property owners could see their tax rates drop dramatically if the city merges with Whitfield County. The effect on county property tax rates likely wouldn’t be as large, but it would still generally be downward, based on data provided by the Vinson Institute.

Institute staff provided the county and Dalton elected officials with tax data from five of the seven consolidated governments in Georgia. Those numbers showed that city property tax rates dropped anywhere from 71.46 percent in Cusetta the year after it merged with Chattahoochee County to 10.48 percent in Augusta the year after it merged with Richmond County.

By contrast, the property tax rate fell 18.59 percent in Chattahoochee county after its merger. But it stayed flat in Richmond County, and the property tax actually rose 0.45 percent in Quitman County the year after it merged with Georgetown.

Data wasn’t available for Columbus/Muscogee County, and Echols County is legally considered a consolidated county, but it never had an incorporated city in its boundaries.

As they say with investments in the stock market, history doesn’t guarantee future performance, but still…it’s a fairly good indicator to get an idea of what will potentially happen. From what I gather from the data, it looks like there’s good potential of a reduction in overall property tax rates.

The Dalton-Whitfield consolidation seems like the better option when compared to the Chattanooga-Hamilton consolidation. For one, you see the county commissioners and the City of Dalton cooperating, and, for two, you see them giving the citizens of smaller municipalities the option of whether to opt-out of consolidating (although they would still be under jurisdiction of the consolidated government).

There’s still a lot of research to be done, and I believe that voters in Whitfield and Dalton-proper should keep an open mind and consider both sides of the issue before pressing “Favor” or “Oppose” if/when the measure gets on the ballot.

Tagged as: City of Dalton, David Pennington, Whitfield County