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Taxing Issues of Concern
in Rural Counties?
Since 1992, state law has required every
Georgia county to grant tax reductions on
land used for agriculture—loosely defined to
include timber production, "subsistence farm
ing," and even wildlife habitat. Depending on
how county assessors interpret that "poorly
written" law, most rural properties over 10
acres will qualify, unless they're owned by a
corporation—and under a law passed this year
by the General Assembly, even timber com
panies will soon be allowed the exemption,
Oconee County Tax Appraiser Allen Skinner
tells Flagpole. He estimates that half of the
land in Oconee County receives the "conser
vation-use" exemptions—meaning landown
ers pay perhaps one-tenth the normal taxes.
(Landowners must agree not to develop the
property for 10 years, and will be charged a
penalty if they do. Landowners under 10 acres
must document their conservation usage.)
Oconee County Commissioner Don Norris
owns 45 acres south of Watkinsville valued at
$453,000, county records say. Normally, that
would land him with a $4,500 annual tax bill.
But Norris applied for a conservation-use tax
valuation on the land as timberland; last year
his tax bill was only $229. Nor is he unusual
among Oconee County landowners in receiving
such exemptions. Many of the county's larg
est tracts of land—some 1600 parcels, out
of 17,000 in the county—receive them, says
Skinner. "It's just sort of mushroomed over
time," he says, perhaps including some prop
erties that should not have been allowed, but
that Skinner now considers "grandfathered in."
Similar numbers apply in rural Madison County,
northeast of Athens, Chief Appraiser James
Flynt says. Most applications are accepted,,
he says; but they will be turned down "if we
believe that it's not in good faith agribusiness
production." Flynt isn't sure that wildlife habi
tat is acceptable under the law, but claiming
timber production is "pretty easy," he says.
To former Oconee commission chair Wendell
Dawson—whose website www.avoc.info offers
"another voice from Oconee County"—the
exemption just "allows speculators to keep
their tax bills low," and shifts the tax burden
to homeowners and businesses. Many land-
owners with exemptions—including some
county officials—"are not farmers and do not
own a 'family farm,"' Dawson points out. Take
Oconee County's current commission chair,
Melvin Davis. He has a conservation exemption
on the 11 acres of land he lives on (although
his house is taxed at full value). What sort of
farming is Davis doing? "I'm growing trees,"
he says. Applications by county officials go
through the same process as any others,
Skinner says, and he sees both pros and cons
to the program. It has probably helped keep
the county's property values high by keeping
land off the market. "I've had a lot of people
tell me that, if wasn't for conservation-use,
they'd have sold their land a long time ago—
they wouldn't be able to afford [the taxes]."
"It's truly a benefit to the big landowner
that does want to hold his property," local
land agent Gerry Whitworth points out. If
the exemption didn't exist, he says, "it would
cause a lot of the bigger landowners to think
twice about either buying or holding their
property." And while the penalties are sub
stantial for developing land covered by the
program, people do sometimes pay them and
develop the land anyway.
John Huie jphuie@alhens.net
Residency Challenge
No Trouble for Tribble
Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Coroner Bobby
Tribble and his electoral challenger, Sonny
Wilson, spent somewhere under an hour with
their lawyers and the ACC Board of Elections in
the council chamber at City Hall on Thursday,
May 29. The occasion: a formal hearing before
the board in response to Wilson's request to
have Tribble's residency looked into. But the
board found unanimously, with no debate,
that Tribble is a resident of Clarke County and
is in good standing to run for re-election to
the post of coroner.
Wilson, who ran unsuccessfully for coro
ner against Tribble in 2004, filed the request
mainly because Tribble's new wife, Karen (they
married in 2006) lives in Watkinsville. Tribble,
who is 54, explained on the witness stand last
Thursday that Karen, who lived in Savannah
when they met, moved to Watkinsville with
her children for the better homebuying
investment there than in Athens. Mr. Tribble
co-signed on a loan for that house, but said
that his residence is at his parents' home on
Whitehead Road in Athens-Clarke; he has lived
with them "10 or 12 years," he said, and feels
a need to stay with them as they age, espe
cially since his father suffers from Alzheimer's
disease. In a given week, he said, "I'll prob
ably spend five nights at my parents', and a
couple nights at Karen's."
Said the challenger Wilson after the hear
ing ended uneventfully, "That was my biggest
reason for challenging, was that married cou
ples live together traditionally." He added, "I
just want to make sure he's meeting the same
qualifications that I am."
The outcome of the race for coroner will be
decided in the Democratic primary on July 15;
barely 5500 people voted in the primary runoff
that decided the contest between Wilson and
Tribble in 2004. (The margin was just shy of
300 votes.) Meanwhile, one last point should
be made: Where does Wilson live? In Bogart—
the Clarke County part of Bogart, that is.
Ben Emanuel ben@flagpole.com
ACC Stormwater Launches
Interactive Map This Week
It doesn't take a particularly intimate
knowledge of recent Athens political history
to know that the work of the ACC Stormwater
Education Coordinator probably isn't always
a piece of cake. Leaving aside the issue of
homeowner unhappiness with—or misunder
standing of—the stormwater utility fee that
now exists, it's not a simple task to explain
to citizens what problems exist with local
streams, what causes those problems, and how
they might be fixed: in other words, to edu
cate the public on the work of Athens-Clarke's
Stormwater Division. But Natalie White, the
current Stormwater Education Coordinator, has
a few good things to talk
about these days.
First, the funds col
lected by the Stormwater
Division are finally being
put to work on Athens'
streets. The construction
project currently tying up
Five Points aims to pre
vent the flooding of shops
along Lumpkin Street at the same time that it
will stabilize the outlet of all that storm flow
into neighborhood woods off Catawba Avenue,
thereby building infrastructure to (hopefully)
get water off the streets more quickly but also
(again, hopefully) slow that water down and
improve the ecology of the stream it flows
into.
Far and away the most exciting news for
White right now, though, is the launch (sched
uled for Friday, June 6, though the exact date
is subject to change) of a new, grant-funded
interactive website that will allow citizens to
easily report all kinds of watershed-related
issues—like chemical dumping, erosion prob
lems, or flooding—and to keep up-to-date
on construction projects and other events.
The site, to be found (once it's launched) at
www.accstormwater.com/watersheds, utilizes
Google Maps to allow a user reporting a prob
lem to type in an address, then move a marker
on the map to the precise location that needs
attention. Various map layers show construc
tion activity, division programs, and even the
Georgia Environmental Protection Division's
(EPD) list of impaired streams within the
county. Even without interacting with the
map, a citizen might learn things from it—like
what creek's watershed they live in (those are
all delineated).
"We knew that there was a need to receive
and give information to the community, and
it seemed like a map was a good way to do
it," White says. The project was funded by
part of an EPD grant (not through county tax
dollars or, for that matter, the stormwater
utility). And it addresses a longstanding detri
ment to the work of government agencies like
the Stormwater Division: many citizens are
either reluctant to report pollution problems
or, as White says, "don't always know who
to call." On the site, reporting individuals
can remain anonymous, but they're also able
to enter their contact information, in which
case a field officer will follow up with them
to report on what happened with the incident
they noted. White points
out, too, that the site
may have bugs when first
launched, but that those
should be fixed quickly.
"We want to give
people a way to tell us
what's going on," White
says, "because honestly
the best way to take care
of your watershed is for people to become
stewards of their area." Beyond that, she
notes, providing an efficient, "innovative"
way for citizens to be involved in solving
community problems—or to learn details on
a construction project that's tying up traf
fic, like what its purpose is and how long it
will last—are key in a town where it takes
interactive, hands-on programming to keep
people involved. "Just having brochures sit
ting around different places doesn't really
work, especially in an active community like
Athens," she says.
Also a part of White's job: keeping tabs on
the new "CLRs" (cigarette litter receptacles)
installed this spring to keep cigarette butts
off the streets and sidewalks of downtown—
and out of storm drains and streams. She
reports that the receptacles—paid for with
a grant from Keep Georgia Beautiful in con
junction with Keep Athens-Clarke County
Beautiful—had collected approximately 6,355
butts over five weeks by Memorial Day, with
an average of about 1,271 per week.
She's keeping track of the CLRs' perfor
mance so that they can be moved to other
parts of downtown if needed. A formal sur
vey of their success at keeping butts off the
ground probably won't be conducted until UGA
fall semester classes start, she says.
Ben Emanuel ben@flagpcle.com
“Just having brochures
sitting around different
places doesn’t really work,
especially in an active
community like Athens.”
‘J V
6 FLAGPOLE.COM-JUNE 4, 2008
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