Commissioner Caywood and Councilman Estes state we need a Property tax if not a Wheel tax!
When does it stop? Why is it that the first solution for our elected officials is to go deep into the pockets of it’s citizens?
Bradley Countians and Clevelanders are suffering and our current leaders are turning us around and putting the proverbial tax knife in the center of our backs!
In sure from their vantage point they don’t see the people hurting! I know personally families that are one check, one more tax from being homeless and on the street! The financial burden of this and more taxes in the horizon are going to place many in our county on the road to a socialist utopia, welfare and total dependence on the governement for cheese and a loaf of bread!
The fake president is doing it in DC, why not continue that effort at the local level! Many in Cleveland/Bradley County are at or below the poverty level! Every school, but one is a Title 1 program, meaning that we are at a certain poverty level in our community to accept federal grants!
We gave just suffered two of the strongest tornado disasters in our history with more than 600 homes destroyed and countless others ruined and many dead! Now, as we are awakening out of this disaster the people begin looking up and all we can see on the horizon is a Wheel Tax or a Property Tax ? You have got to be kidding me?
When will out elected officials get the message? I recently encouraged one of our commissioners to take me up on a challenge! Everywhere you go today, downtown, grocery store, in your community simply ask everyone you come across for 32 dollars! All ages, sizes, income levels, ask them for 32 dollars! See just how hard it would be for most to cough up that 32 dollars, being the equivalent of the Wheel Tax! I told the Commissioner that by the end of the day he or she would be crying and a Wheel tax would no longer be on the table!
Guys we are facing one of the toughest times in our country economically and instead of our elected officials from Mayor to Mayor, from City Council to County Commission making it easier on you, they are deciding that as a plan B, if the Wheel Tax gets turned down by the people, a Property tax will be levied upon you with the additional risk of losing your home on the line! God forbid? Where is the human side to all these decisions by our locally elected officials?
At one point do we say enough is enough! For all accounts and purposes the Property tax can be put to a referendum also! The will of the people can and will be enforced!
Another proposal out there and will be touched on in another blog is this! I feel there is a conflict of interest between certain members of our elected body and their connections to the local school system! The boards, council and commission are stocked full of people with a vested interest in their decisions! You know who you are and you are many, pull your self out of the tax talk. I believe a conflict of interest resides within our governing bodies! Pull your self out of the debate as you should! Taxing the citizens with a bias is not good practice! Hmmm food for thought!
A quick solution to our problems may be to ask the people who don’t belong in the current school zone area they are attending to politely go to the area they are zoned for! I hear this will take care of the overcrowding problem! I hear 200 to 300 kids are in our system that belong to systems outside the county and even the state! That would solve the overcrowding issue and nullify the need for 8 pods at a local high school! Just thinking out loud here in blogger world! Hate to discuss and perhaps over step my blogger boundaries!
Read the article below and look at the interactions between them! Absolutely not one person speaking up for “Joe Citizen!”
Take a look at the picture I’m guessing was taken at Lake Forest, with the cabinet door taken off and dangling from particle board! Think it is high time a group of citizen volunteers take up hammer and nail and fix those 40 million dollar cabinets! How about it? A citizen repair and maintenance team is on the way! Sound good ? Contact me or comment below if you have cabinet repair skills?
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2012/mar/15/bradley-officials-weigh-school-needs/?local
CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Members of four Bradley County elected bodies met over lunch Wednesday to hash out how to pay for about $38 million in immediate schools needs.
The Bradley County Schools system has a short list of needs that amounts to about $26 million.
“We have building needs, and one of them is Lake Forest [Middle School],” said county school board Chairman Charlie Rose, who taught at Lake Forest for 30 years. “It is a maintenance nightmare.”
The school, which opened in 1976 and was built for elementary and middle school students, includes 17 buildings. County officials want to replace the academic buildings with one large classroom building and keep the remaining buildings, including the gymnasium and cafeteria.
Overcrowding
They also want more space at Walker Valley High School. Built for 1,200 students, it now has more than 1,500. And officials want to replace Blue Springs Elementary School, lost in the 2011 tornadoes, Rose said.
Members of the Cleveland City Council, the Bradley County Commission and the city and county school boards talked about the needs during the roundtable at the Mountain View Inn.
“This is one issue where we are really joined at the hip,” Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland said in his opening remarks.
Fast population growth is fueling the immediate need for another elementary school in the city system, Director Martin Ringstaff said.
“Rezoning is not the answer,” he said. “You can’t rezone overcrowded schools into other overcrowded schools.”
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Poll
Should Bradley County have a wheel tax?
yes
no
vote results
Push for wheel tax
County Commission Chairman Louie Alford said the solution is passage of a $32 wheel tax in August by county voters.
“If that goes through, it should give us some additional money for some of these projects and pay down the school debt,” Alford said.
Commissioner Jeff Morelock said a $32 wheel tax will not generate enough income to do all that.
A property tax increase of a few cents would be cheaper for taxpayers and generate the needed money, City Councilman Bill Estes said.
In response to a question about what would happen if voters turn down the wheel tax, Alford said, “There is no plan B.”
Commissioner Terry Caywood said the next alternative is a property tax increase.
Commissioner Jeff Yarber then noted that the City Council “has the power to raise its own property taxes.”
Others said all four elected bodies should get behind selling the wheel tax to the public, and Councilman Dale Hughes said each should approve a resolution saying that.
But those resolutions should tell voters exactly how the money would be spent, whether on immediate needs or to pay down the county’s $65 million school debt, city school board member Dawn Robinson said.
Commissioner Adam Lowe said some voters in his district see paying down the debt as an immediate need, too, .
Contact Randall Higgins at rhiggins@timesfreepress.com or 423-314-1029.
Bradley County News Network 