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About The Commerce news. (Commerce, Ga.) 1???-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2016)
PAGE 4A THE COMMERCE NEWS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 Editorial Views The case for strategic tax abatemnts During the spring campaigns for the board of commissioners races in Jackson County the subject of property annexations received some debate—are they good or bad for Jackson County its taxpayers and its school systems? Last week’s action by the Jackson County Industrial Development Author ity related to issuing bonds and abating property taxes for the new Amazon fulfill ment center in Braselton illustrates how abatements are used to grow the tax digest — not to mention to bring jobs to the county. Both are missions of the IDA. Amazon is leasing a building, into which it will invest another $18 million. That building, including the $18 million addition, is not part of the abatement plan. The abatement covers “personal prop erty” which in tax jargon means equip ment. Amazon anticipates $37 million worth of such equipment being installed, and the agreement with the IDA calls for an eight-year abatement (actually during the final year there is zero abatement), with the amount of the taxes abated declining each year. Had the county not offered the abate ment, officials believe that Amazon would have located elsewhere, given the intense competition for industry in Georgia and the adjoining states. With or without Amazon, the build ing would have gone on the tax digest Jan. 1. Without the abatement, there is no way of knowing what might have eventually landed in the building, but most distribution centers do not require anything approaching $37 million worth of equipment, and another company would probably not have added another $18 million to the value of the building. It is highly probable that Jackson County its fire districts and its school systems will garner more tax money because Amazon is in the building — even with a tax abatement — than a typical distribu tion center would generate in the same building with zero tax relief. Because it is a fulfillment center, the Amazon facility offers more and better jobs than an ordinary distribution cen ter. Up to 700 jobs paying an average of $30,000 a year is a significant boon for Jackson County. Employees will be vested in the company’s 401k program immediately will be covered by medical insurance on Day One, and Amazon will fully fund tuition for employees going to school for “in-demand” careers as defined by Jackson County. Granted, the tax benefits from any industry would be better if there were no abatements, but the competition for new business and industry is so intense — because of the potential tax revenue and jobs—that those companies with the most to offer can demand concessions. The math in this case suggests that Ama zon will contribute more in taxes with its abatement than most other companies likely to locate in that building would pay without an abatement. The taxes to help fund county schools and services and the 700 new jobs make Amazon’s tax abatement a good deal for Jackson County. Unless otherwise noted, all editorials are written by Mark Beardsley. He can be reached at mark@mainstreetnews. com. The Commerce News ESTABLISHED IN 1875 USPS 125-320 P.O. Box 908 Jefferson, GA 30549 MIKE BUFFINGTON CoPublisher SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher Mark Beardsley. Editor THE COMMERCE NEWS is the legal or gan of the city of Commerce and is pub lished every Wednesday by MainStreet Newspapers Inc. Periodical postage paid at Jefferson, Georgia 30549. Subscription Rates Per Year: $25 POSTMASTER send address changes to THE COMMERCE NEWS, P.O. Box 908, Jefferson, GA 30549. Abandoning the landline Like Democrats and Republicans leaving their parties to declare themselves Indepen dents, I finally reached the decision to aban don my home (landline) telephone. Alas, I can’t physically remove it due to needing phone-line-based lousy Internet service, but I no longer answer the home phone unless I’m expecting an important call. Not that I get many important calls. By important, I do not mean notification that I’ve won a cruise to the Bahamas, that it’s my last chance to apply for senior benefits or that I qualify for a home security system because crime has increased in my neighborhood. Rather, an “important” call is typically from family. Two things figured in my decision. The first is that 95 percent of the phone calls to our landline are robocalls soliciting donations or trying to frighten us into buying a product or service we don’t need, or scammers threat ening to sue us for nonpayment of federal income taxes we don’t owe. The other five percent are for Barbara. The second reason is that I finally began keeping my cell phone on, so I can be reached when it’s important, and with which I have the option of taking or rejecting a call, depending on who’s calling and my mood at the time. Reaching that point took several years. I’ve always said that my cell phone was for me to call other people, not for them to call me, It's Gospel According To Mark By Mark Beardsley but as I’ve used the phone more and more to reach people I need to talk to for business, the realization was forced on me that a lot of the time when they call back I’m not in the office, and if I want to get that important quote, missing piece of information or a chewing out for my editorial opinion, I’d best be readily available. Barbara says there’s a third reason—that I’m becoming a grumpy old man. Our landline does not have Caller ID, which leaves us in sort of a communications lottery when the phone rings — is it a call for which answering provides a benefit (someone we want to talk to) or the pre-digital equivalent of spam? The line has an answering machine, which we check dutifully so when that rare legitimate call does come in, we can call back. Over the past several months, the call vol ume on the landline has increased. Before Barbara retired, it was a rare day when I came home from work and didn’t find the light blink ing on the answering machine. If there were four calls, three of them were hang-ups and the fourth most likely would be an annoying robocall (okay language purists, annoying and robocall are redundant). Right now we stand on the cusp of an infu sion of robocalls from Georgia Republicans, the National Rifle Association and Donald Trump himself seeking our votes; or from Hol lywood celebrities and the presumed future First Man Bill Clinton, assuring us that a Trump presidency will bring on the End Times. For the life of me, I can’t understand why candi dates think anyone would listen to such verbal sludge, let alone be influenced on how to vote by a recording, but I sure don’t want to field such calls even for the length of time it takes to hang up. I’m no pioneer here. I know people without cell phones who never answer their landline phone without checking their Caller ID, and it’s not exactly Top Secret that a lot of people forego a landline altogether. The landlines, it appears, are headed the way of the car rier pigeon, long-distance phone bills and Rand-McNally road atlases. Times change. If you can’t reach me at work, call my home phone. I may get back to you. Mark Beardsley is the editor of The Com merce News. He lives in Commerce. The hard road to happiness My doctor just prescribed a new nasal spray for me, and I was driving home from his office when CVS called. A half-ounce of the spray was going to cost $300, and my insurance wouldn’t cover any of it. “But your doctor can apply for prior authoriza tion; then the insurance might cover part of it.” I said okay. The next day my phone rang and I heard a voice that could have etched glass. “This is Optum,” said a robot. “We are calling to inform you that your prior authorization has been denied.” I suspected that the heartless, brainless robot had handled the whole thing. This is what’s happening nowadays. Those life-saving EpiPens for the severely allergic used to cost $57- already a hardship for the 45 million Americans living below the poverty line. Then the price rocketed to $218 (and we began seeing lavish ads for the EpiPen on TV). Now the manufacturer has been “shamed” into “reducing” the price to $150, which one journalist said was like a kidnapper reducing his ransom demand. We face many such problems, now that corporations run the government. It’s why the government isn’t running much at all, and when it does run, it tends to benefit the corporations, while we pay the cost, both in taxes and in exor bitant retail prices. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham said, “The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.” He A Few Facts, A Lot of Gossip II By Susan Harper was echoing our Declaration of Independence, which ranks happiness as a value all people have a right to pursue — for the hope of it moti vates us to strive for survival and freedom. The only “people” who have the ability to pursue happiness these days seem to be the corporations and the minions who toil in the upper echelons of the corporations or the government. A good many of the rest of us are scrambling to keep body and soul together. And the real shame, for the U.S., is in our homeless, in the “prison industry” based on corporate profit rather than rehabilitation, in the millions of people (especially among the elderly or disabled) who are increasingly unable to afford their medications, and — in this new, cruel America—the pockets of abject poverty unem ployment, hunger and hopelessness where the heroin and opioid addiction “industry” now thrives. Meet Dequan Jackson. Back when he was 13, he accidentally banged into a teacher when he was horsing around in his school’s hallway. The teacher charged him with battery. He agreed to plead guilty and accepted a year’s proba tion, with strict rules, so that at the end of the probation period the charge could be reduced to a misdemeanor. He followed the rules assid uously did community service in a food bank, observed the 8:00 pm curfew, etc., but at the end of the 12 months, he and his mom could not come up with the $200 for court costs. They barely had money for food. So his probation was extended for another 14 months and the costs rose to $868. This is what our “systems” can end up doing. “You feel like you’re drowning and you’re trying to get some air,” Dequan says, “but people are just pouring more water into the pool.” It’s part of the reason Donald Trump has such outsize popularity: desperate people feel that someone is finally listening to them. Dequan, now 16, is an honor student and a star linebacker. He was lucky: somebody lis tened. Perhaps we all need to listen as hard as we can, and aim to create a country in which more people can thrive. Susan Harper is a retired editor, lecturer, and local library director who currently serves on the Jackson County and Piedmont Regional library boards. The book from 1912 I have a book that was published in 1912. It was a limited edition of 750 copies, of which “only 250 are offered for sale.” I have no idea what was intended for the remaining five hundred. The book is a collection of poems-but- not-poems. That is, these selections were originally written in verse, in Bengali, but were translated into English prose by the author. The book is entitled Gitanjali (“Song Offer ings”) by Rabindra Nath Tagore. Tagore, who was the first non-Western- er to win the Nobel Prize in literature (in 1913), died in 1941. Well, everyone who was involved with this particular book has died by now. Even the owner of the book has died. I happen to know who that was, by the way, because she inscribed her name in it: Cecily Reddoch. And furthermore, I know a few personal things about her. She was a grown woman, not a child. Her signature is firm (but not arrogant). She underlined it with a flourish. She was not old: her handwriting is gracefully smooth. Furthermore, I think she bought this book in the spring and probably read it while sitting in her garden. How do I know that? The sixth stanza of Tagore’s poem begins thus: “Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust....” And tucked into the book at that page is a small dried flower. It is sort of cream-colored with dark veins on the petals. I think it is a white violet. So -1 know that Cecily was a sensitive person who was moved enough to follow the poet’s injunction and pluck a flower, just as he asked. The book’s covers are moderately soiled, so I think the book has passed through many hands. But every reader, when coming upon that flower, has been careful not to let it fall out. Thus, Ceci ly’s little token of sympathy with the poet has remained intact for over a century. (It’s funny what people insert into their books. I have an edition of Casanova’s Mem- oires that contains a newspaper clipping about pumpkin pie.) Tagore was a poet, an artist and a musi cian. He was profoundly popular in India and is certainly not unknown in the West. He was a religious mystic and, although non-Chris tian, his religious longings resonate perfectly with anyone who believes in - or wishes for - a god. That is the thesis of his book, his long ing for God. He portrays himself as a singer, hired to sing to the master of the house. He hopes that when his performance is finished he may be allowed to linger and at least see his host. But he has waited all his life and, as he says (#13) “The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instru ment...” Haven’t we all felt that way, always prepar ing for our big moment, but never quite ready when it comes? Would you enjoy this book? I don’t know: This is the voice from another time, another culture, another continent. Tagore handled the family estate for several years and yet he found time to withdraw from the hurly-burly of daily life and listen quietly to whatever God had to say to him. Few of us can manage that. There is never time to sit and contem plate God, the universe or ourselves. This is Tagore’s response to that complaint: “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” Willis Cook is a retired electrical engineer who was born in New Orleans and grew up in the Mississippi Delta. He lives in Franklin County.
