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July 12, 2012

Whitfield County, cities to start tax talks

Charles Oliver charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com

Whitfield County and city of Dalton officials will soon begin talks that could change how the city and county split approximately $17 million in Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) collections each year.

The county Board of Commissioners recently sent a letter to start those negotiations to each of the county’s four cities. The first meeting will be held at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, July 24, in room 105 of Dalton State College’s James. E. Brown Center. The meeting is open to the public.

“We have been exchanging some notes back and forth between (City Attorney) Jim Bisson and (County Attorney) Robert Smalley, but the elected officials have not met face-to-face to discuss the LOST,” said Board of Commissioners Chairman Mike Babb.

The county government currently gets about 84 percent of LOST revenues. The city of Dalton gets 14 percent, and the three smaller cities divide the rest. But that split could change dramatically this year.

The agreement that divides that money must be renegotiated every 10 years, after the numbers from the latest census are in. The agreement is up this year, and Dalton officials are pushing for a much larger share. City Council members say they deserve a share at least equal to Dalton’s share of the total county population, about 32 percent. County commissioners disagree. Earlier this year, both commissioners and City Council members said they were far apart and the matter could end up decided by a state judge.

Are the two sides any closer now?

“I guess we will find out at the meeting,” said Dalton Mayor David Pennington.

The LOST agreement also ties into the service-delivery agreement between the county and the various cities. Required by the state, that agreement spells out which services each government will provide to avoid unnecessary duplication.

A 15-member commission created by the General Assembly to study a possible merger of Dalton and Whitfield County general governments recently proposed that the two combine their recreation departments, public works departments and law enforcement patrol services. Babb says that report will likely influence talks on the service-delivery agreement.

“All of this ties in together,” he said. “I think we could put recreation together pretty quickly. We have only eight employees. They have 44. The city has more facilities and more people, so the city would probably be the one that would be in charge of recreation, and the county would make a monetary contribution. But that’s still something to talk about.”

Pennington said city officials had proposed merging recreation, public works and law enforcement patrol even before the merger commission made its recommendations.

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