Mayor Lusk gets slapped down by TDOT Commissioner

Signal Mountain has had a less than ideal relationship with the state highway department, going back to adamant opposition to TDOT plans to widen the road up the mountain back some 10 or more years ago. When I got on the Town Council, I made it a priority to work to patch up this relationship with some success. I also learned that it is rarely productive to pick fights with state and county officials in the newspaper. Unfortunately, despite many conversations on this subject with Bill Lusk during  my term (including his attacks on WWTA, the sewer authority http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_129533.asp, an attack for which he personally apologized to former WWTA head Henry Hoss), he has not learned this lesson and has now been publicly slapped down by TDOT commissioner John Schroer (http://chattanoogan.com/articles/article_203404.asp). Schroer's letter is also in the Chattanooga TimesFree Press this morning. We were told several years ago by TDOT that a new road up the mountain would cost many millions of dollars and would close the road for up to 2 years and this has now been confirmed once again by Commissioner Schroer. There is a long term plan to build a separate road up the back of the mountain in the Sawyer/Corral Road area, but this is no more than a line on a map on the long-term transportation plan and is also years in the future. I feared this would happen when I read Mayor Lusk's intemperate public comments calling the re-paving of US 127 a "waste of money"  and figured he would get a phone call or letter as we did after a similar incident early in my term. However, I didn't expect such a public calling out. Frankly, it is an embarrassing incident for this town and I hope that a lesson was finally learned.

In other news, apparently the Council has decided against a garbage tax and will plan to raise property taxes in spite of Vice-Mayor Susan Robertson's campaign comments that she "hoped" she wouldn't have to raise taxes for the next 3-4 years. I thought at the time that this showed a clear lack of knowledge about the state of the town's finances and apparently that was the case. It was an unfortunate missed opportunity to use the campaign as a forum to inform the public about the state of the town's finances and to engage the citizens in discussion about ways to deal with these concerns. I'm sure that many of her supporters, including some of our local tea party advocates who promoted her as an anti-tax champion are feeling misled at best.  I still think that, in light of this financial need and a deficit which is now over $300,000, continuing to pay huge extra amounts on the "school bond" is a luxury we cannot afford (we paid an extra $900,000 in 2009 and almost $700,000 in 2010 over and above our minimum annual payment). This money could go along way towards covering the deficit and some of the town's long term maintenance and public works needs.

Garbage Tax??

It is awfully hard to follow what is going on with the budget on Signal Mountain. The last I heard, a new garbage tax was a "done deal" according to Bill Wallace's Facebook page and certainly the news coverage seemed to support that. Today, Bill's Facebook implies that the garbage tax will not be enacted and that a property tax increase is ahead. I know that Annette Allen has advocated a garbage tax (oops, I mean "fee") for awhile. When we went to automated garbage service a few years ago (a change I strongly supported), it was project to save around $100,000 per year which I thought justified the decrease in service from twice a week to once a week. I did not support decreasing backdoor service to our elderly and disabled citizens, though there was pressure from staff and other councilmembers to do so and apparently that is part of the current proposal... ie, increased fees for decreased service. I have long known that we would need to do something about revenue soon and was frankly surprised that town manager Honna Rogers hadn't recommended a tax increase sooner, but since my last year on the council was an election year, I suppose I shouldn't have been (surprised, that is). Nonetheless, the new census numbers supported my contention that the town has not grown in the last decade, in spite of all the fear-mongering about "unbridled growth". However, our costs do continue to grow and I knew that eventually the piper would have to be paid somehow.

There is some merit in going to a fee-based garbage system if it is used to reinforce recycling and decrease the waste stream. However, a "fee" which applies essentially to every household and which is an additional cost is a tax, so that's what I'll call it. I would have preferred an offset in property taxes if this was truly initiated as a way to separate out the garbage service. The problem with fees is that they are regressive, ie they affect those of lesser means (especially those on fixed incomes) disproproportionately and if the service being paid for is one that everyone uses, it becomes a regressive tax rather than a true fee. I supported some of the fee increases introduced during my term because we were trying to get in line with other towns and because the services were more optional (pool, tennis, gym, MACC, etc), however garbage service is basic and universal.

Frankly, I am a bit surprised that Joe Dumas and Mo Kiah and some of our other anti-tax teaparty types haven't been raising the roof on Chattanoogan.com over this proposal. As a matter of fact, the Chattanoogan seems quite uninterested in covering much of anything on Signal Mountain. The last article I found on our budget was from 5/6 (http://chattanoogan.com/articles/article_200658.asp). Chattanoogan.com certainly seems to be less interested in Signal Mountain's  activities since I've been off the council (maybe a coincidence or am I just paranoid??).

At any rate, I am very curious about what the final decision will be but either way I would plan on paying more for something. I still refer everyone back to my suggestion to keep taxes level, (see blog of Feb. 10), but since Mayor Lusk attacked me so aggressively on this proposal in his letter (on the Chattanoogan.com) of last fall, I would not expect this to be adopted.