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PAGE 4A - THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS, WEDNESDAY. TANUARY 7, 2009
mion
Editorial Views
Fiscal Accountability
Still Top Priority
Four years ago, when Pat Bell assumed office
as chairman of the Jackson County Board
of Commissioners, her priority was fiscal
accountability By and large she (and her fel
low commissioners) achieved that. Hunter
Bicknell would be wise to follow suit.
Bell entered office at a time when the
economy was strong and tax revenue was
growing, but county spending was growing
faster. Bicknell is in the opposite situation.
The economy is in turmoil with no immedi
ate relief in sight, and tax revenue is falling,
yet the obligations of county government to
fund operations and debt service remain.
In theory, Jackson County property owners
should see a reduction in their tax bills due to
falling property values. After all, as the value
of property increased, tax assessments upon
which bills are based were also increased.
Today, with values falling, in a logical and
fair world, all of our tax assessments would
also decline. If that happens even to a small
degree, coupled with declining revenue from
sales taxes and building permits, the commis
sioners will have their hands full just making
ends meet without substantial tax increases.
A strong county reserve fund will help,
but until officials have a clear notion that
economic recovery is at hand, managing the
county's spending — and keeping it equal to
or less than county income — must be the
top priority. Taxpayers have a right to expect
government to be a good steward of their
taxes, but that is never so important as when
citizens are experiencing or worried about
job loss or other financial issues. As taxpay
ers struggle to make ends meet, government
must strive to be as little a burden upon the
taxpayers as possible.
The challenge is enormous, but we expect
our county government to meet it.
Proposal Would Make
Tax System Less Fair
Just like last year, the Georgia General
Assembly wants to tinker with the state's
system for funding education. State Rep.
Edward Lindsey (R-Buckhead) wants to cap
increases in tax assessments of property,
taxes on which are the funding source for
local schools. That has an appeal, particular
ly in a bad economy, but lawmakers should
reject the bill.
The theory behind tax assessments is that
they're based on the fair market value of
property. In a declining market where assess
ments do not fall along with actual selling
prices, we see a weakness in the system.
Still, if artificial caps are placed on assess
ments, it won't take long before the assess
ments bear no relationship to fair market
value. The taxes on identical pieces of prop
erty would vary according to when the prop
erty was purchased.
The first requirement of any system of
taxation is that it be fair, and the guiding
assumption of property taxes is the relation
ship with fair market value. Severing that
relationship will assure that property taxes
will get increasingly unfair as tax burdens
are shifted according to length of ownership
of property.
Editorials, unless otherwise noted, are written
by Mark Beardsley. He can be reached at mark@
mainstreetnews. com
The Commerce News
ESTABLISHED IN 1875
USPS 125-320
1672 South Broad Street
Commerce, Georgia 30529
MIKE BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
MARK BEARDSLEY..Editor/General Manager
JUSTIN POOLE Sports Editor
TERESA MARSHALL Office Manager
MERRILL BAGWELL Cartoonist
THE COMMERCE NEWS is the legal organ
of the city of Commerce and is published
every Wednesday by MainStreet Newspapers
Inc. Periodical postage paid at Jefferson, Georgia
30549.
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and Madison counties, $19.75; State of
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POSTMASTER send address changes to THE
COMMERCE NEWS. P.O. Box 908, Jefferson. GA.
30549.
Are there ANY college football teams
that didn’t go to a bowl?
Will Things Be Fine In ‘09?
My sister called at
midnight on Dec. 31
to exult over the pass
ing of 2008, which
began for her with a
brief but dreadful ill
ness, went on from
there in like fashion,
and ended none too
soon. I knew how she
felt; 1994 was such an
all-around stinker of
a year for me that I still won't drink a
wine with that date on the bottle.
As a country, we've just come
through a wild year, even for us. I
didn't understand what a wide-open,
way-out, exuberant and wacky country
we live in until I lived in someone
else's country and looked at us from
there. And as it happened, I did this
the year that President Kennedy was
assassinated, and then his assassin was
shot on national TV. "Is Texas still the
Wild West?" said one of my Scottish
friends. "I hadn't realized." I told her I
hadn't either.
But of course Texas is not only the
home state of our "cowboy president,"
but also the site, in 2008, of a raid on
a known polygamous compound, in
a country where polygamy is illegal
but is practiced openly and rewarded
with federal subsidies for the multiple
wives, who are useful to their hus
bands and their sect mainly as sources
of income, sex, and children/workers,
and are abused and even murdered at
the whim of their "prophet."
The raid occupied us all for a few
weeks in April and then vanished
from the media, and in the ensuing
silence most of the 416 children who
had been rescued from the compound
were returned to their polygamous
parents and their miserable fates as
religious freedom trumped all other
laws in the still-wild West, and we
A Few
Facts t A
Lot Of
Gossip 2
BY SUSAN HARPER
turned our attention
from the small fry of
the Fundamentalist
Latter Day Saints to
some bigger fish.
/ L The Beijing
K Olympics brought
us Michael Phelps,
who even swam like a
fish. The presidential
primaries introduced
us to Sarah Palin and
Tina Fey, one of whom was running
for vice president. The economic col
lapse ushered in a whole rogues' gal
lery of robber barons, and then Bernie
Madoff (rhymes with paid-off) made
off with $55 billion and wasn't even
jailed. He's under "house arrest" in
one of his mansions. Ah, America.
My own favorite person to say good
bye to, as 2009 begins, is President
Bush. He's had a sad eight years, but
I'm at pains to point out that he gave
us the No-Call List, saving us from
phone predators who want to sell
us things like aluminum siding, or
membership in the Hosiery Club of
America. He also focused attention on
the problem of AIDS in Africa, and
added Part D to Medicare. So I can
be generous, now that he's leaving,
and forgive him for saying things like
"The illiteracy level of our children
are appalling," and "Why don't you
mentor a child how to read?" At least
he was expressing the need for better
education. He's really just very wide-
open and way-out — in other words,
entirely American — and Condoleezza
Rice says we'll miss him. Who knows?
Stranger things have happened. I'm
just hoping things will be fine, or at
least better, in 2009!
Susan Harper is director of the
Commerce Public Library. She lives in
Commerce.
Hello World, We’re Here
Viewpoints
In
Rotation
A new movie was
released in December:
"The Day the Earth
Stood Still," star
ring Keanu Reeves.
The story is about an
alien (Reeves) who
comes to earth to
warn humans that we
are too pugnacious,
violent and dangerous
to be allowed to live
and unless we reform,
somebody is going to pull the plug. As
a publicity gimmick, when the movie
was released it was also beamed into
space — just to let anyone know that
we know that they know ...
Does anyone know? The sun is an
average star and our solar system is
located about 27,000 light years from
the center of our galaxy. (We're a tract
house in the far suburbs, so to speak.)
There are an estimated total of more
than 200 billion stars in our galaxy
and we are finding that more and
more of them have planets. But inter
stellar distances are well, astronomi
cal, and perhaps noticing us would be
like finding a needle in a haystack.
But we have been pretty actively
proclaiming our existence to the
galaxy for about a hundred years,
because by 1902 Guglielmo Marconi
BY WILLIS COOK
was sending and
receiving Morse code
by radio and ever
since we have been
sending out an ever-
increasing stream of
electromagnetic radia
tion. Of course, at first
it was just a dribble,
but now it is a con
stant barrage of elec
tromagnetic signals.
It is interesting to think
of our solar system, which is about 11
light hours in diameter, surrounded
by a cloud of electromagnetic noise
about 100 light years in diameter. (A
light year is the distance light or any
electromagnetic radiation travels in
a year, and we've been doing this for
100 years. A light year is six trillion
miles — a number even bigger than a
federal bailout.)
Our galaxy is a big place: 100,000
light years in diameter. Are there any
stars within 100 light years of us? As a
matter of fact, there are hundreds. The
closest one is Alpha Centauri, about
3.5 light years away. Even mighty
Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is
only 8 1/2 light years distant. So any
aliens in the Sirius system who are
Please Turn to Page 5A
It's
Gospel
According
To Mark
BY MARK BEARDSLEY
Annual Event:
Make The New
Year’s List
The urge usually strikes
around the turn of the year.
Suddenly, I feel the need to
project some order into the new
year in terms of Things That
Need to be Done.
Some are more like resolu
tions: "Read better books" was
on the list one year. I remember
it because it was one of the few
ideas of that ilk upon which I
followed through.
Most are much more simple
and actually could get accom
plished — basically a to-do list
for the upcoming year. "Build
raised beds in the garden" was
on there a couple of years ago.
Unfortunately, writing such
things down inevitably leads
to the notion that I should
de-clutter my environment. At
work, that means filing and
throwing out; at home it means
discarding items for which I will
have no use — at least not until
I throw them away.
Years ago, I helped Barbara
and her family clean out the
house of her late aunt and uncle
so it could be sold. They never
threw anything out, and while
there were a few treasures, my
lasting impression was that you
can have too much stuff.
I resolved not to let that hap
pen.
It has of course, but around
New Year I attempt to downsize
my inventory of useless and
redundant items.
The exercise is fraught with
peril.
That oil filter wrench fits
none of our filters, but it may
work on our next car. I haven't
used that fishing rod in eight
years, but you never can tell...
You never know when you'll
need a shim, so best keep that
pack that's gathered dust for a
decade. Part of the difficulty is
that the first time in a decade
that you need something is
most likely to occur a week
after you've gotten rid of it.
I am the child of Depression-
era parents. They bought little
and wasted nothing. That I have
five half-inch socket wrenches
(one bought, four found) does
not make it easier to give away
or throw away one. I haven't
put fertilizer on my yard in
years and getting rid of the
spreader would make the garage
a wee bit less cluttered, but...
Still, I'll make some headway.
Out goes a seldom-worn pair of
shoes bought for some special
occasion but not worn since
because they don't fit. Into the
trash go the extra photos of the
larger bass I've caught, the story
off the Internet about growing
better garlic and the Caterpillar
cap I never wear. The 18-year-
old can of concrete sealer will
get tossed, along with a cassette
player.
After the fit wears off, I enjoy
a few days of organization
before I begin restocking the
open spaces with might-need-
someday tools, leftover parts,
papers or castaways.
That's how I celebrated the
New Year. I hope you were as
productive.
Mark Beardsley is editor of The
Commerce News. He can be reached
at mark@mainstreetnews.com