Norwood: Not Supporting Franklin’s Property Tax Increase
The following email was received from Mayoral candidate, Councilwoman Mary Norwood, opposing Mayor Shirley Franklin’s proposed property tax increase. (A call placed to State Sen. Kasim Reed’s spokeswoman was not immediately returned.)
###
A new budget has been proposed for the City of Atlanta that will raise your taxes. For the last seven years I have sat on the Atlanta City Council. I have spent hundreds of hours reviewing the city finances and studying the city budget. Our city’s budget is the classic leaky bucket: money flows in and money oozes out. The city’s bank accounts haven’t been reconciled. Finance directors come and go, and the basic question of how much money the city actually has isn’t answered. I have concluded that the city’s budget is nothing more than a shell game – moving money from one account to another to satisfy the financial crisis of the moment. As I move around this city, listening to the people of Atlanta, citizens tell me that they are troubled with the way our city manages their money. I share this frustration and that is why I am running for Mayor.
Now is not the right time to raise the tax burden our hard-working families pay to City Hall.
With a budget in excess of a half a billion dollars, we have the dollars we need to fund our priorities: cops on the beat, fire stations open 24/7, and an end to the furloughs. We have enough money to promote jobs, protect neighborhoods, enforce property codes, and alleviate traffic congestion hotspots. But we have to prioritize. We have to make choices. Good management counts.
My choice: first we fund the “must haves” like police and fire. Only when we’ve funded our real priorities do we fund the other things that are nice to have. Furloughing police and closing fire stations without cutting costs elsewhere gets things completely backwards. Especially when we have no confidence in the financial figures coming from the Administration. Can we trust 100% in budget numbers that come from a City Hall that cannot even send out accurate water bills? I don’t think so.
I cannot vote for this tax increase.