The Cleveland County Commissioners have called a special 2-day Commissioner’s “Worksession” for January 30th and January 31st, 2020. According to the Meeting announcement and agenda the January 30th worksession will be held at the Public Health Center Conference Room 309 and the January 31st worksession will be held at the American Red Cross. In these “worksessions” there will be strategic planning for the DSS, Animal Services, the County “Strategic Plan,” School Budget and priorities.
This is all HOKUM!!! Hokum being a Charm-School word for BULL SHIT!!! Read on!!!
The biggest goal for this particular Commissioner’s 2-Day “Workshop” is to raise taxes and figure out a cover story to hide it all from the public. All the while Commissioners Johnny Hutchins and Ronnie Whetstine are making their rounds around Cleveland County asking the public to vote to re-elect them, all the while they are blatantly lying to the public about what a good job they have done. Also note that all this planning of the direction Cleveland County will take in the future, that members of the public will have no voice in anything. No public participation at all is allowed. And moving this meetings around to several different places during the middle of the workday is an obvious scheme to discourage the public from even attending. Typical Cleveland County Hokum when there is corruption afoot!!
And, I don’t plan on attending either. I already know what is in store for us taxpayers and the BS propaganda that will soon be plastered all over the Shelby Star.
It goes like this. The County is broke. The Health Department Building, once paid for, has been “hocked” as collateral for a high interest loan. The James Love School as well as the new North Shelby School have all been hocked into a $30+ million loan and the payments are coming due. And the Sheriff wants a new jail and the District Attorney wants a new courthouse. All the while; all of our four high schools are all over 50 years old. Wild and wasteful spending by everybody in Cleveland County government has come home to roost for the Cleveland County Commissioners. And us taxpayers and voters who elected them.
And then, us citizens shot down the latest phony sales tax increase referendum and the only thing left for the Commissioners to do is raise property taxes!!! Of course, they never consider cutting all the wasteful spending that is going on.
But, Raise taxes in an election year??? The Commissioners will tell all kinds of lies to your face about NOT raising your taxes while they are picking your pocket behind your back. Insider sources have already told me what the plan is to cover-up for the coming property tax increases.
First of all, the property tax increases will come through a property value re-evaluation. Property values are supposedly going up and the Commissioners want to cash-in. Now for some mathematics.
Say your property is presently valued at $100,000 and the tax RATE is $1 per $100 in value. Note that the lying Commissioners will be quick to tell you that the property tax rate is 57 cents per $100 value. But the commissioners have left out the school tax, the city or town tax and the fire tax. So, overall a tax rate of $1 is close to the mark. Therefore, $100,000 (value) times $1 (tax rate) divided by $100 = $1,000 out of your pocket.
Now, do the math If your property value goes up to $125,000.
$125,000 X $1 divided by $100 = $1,250. $250 MORE dollars out of your pocket.
Now, the Commissioner’s talking point propaganda, according to sources, is that the phony buzz word the commissioners will be using is Revenue Neutral. What revenue neutral actually means is that a new property tax increase in value will be offset by lowering the tax rate. If you are a reasonable person, you would quickly conclude that doing a new appraisal of all of Cleveland County property values that have gone up and then lowering the tax rate so there is no increase in money coming out of your back pocket (Revenue Neutral) is a foolish thing to do. Spending money to do a new re-evaluation that generates NO extra money is itself a waste. There is NO return on your investment. That alone should tip you off that the planned re-evaluation and lowering the tax rate is worthless. And should also tell you that the commissioners are either severely and stupidly wasteful. Or they are obviously lying to your face.
Something else is obvious too. To make everything worthwhile to the commissioners, they will do the re-evaluation as they have already planned to do. Your dollars that go to pay your tax bill will go up severely. And this is the lie you will be told when your bill goes up.
“We re-evaluated every bodies property and some property values went up and some went down. But Overall everything is Revenue Neutral.” And, “YOU must have been one of the unlucky few whose taxes went up.” The lie will be that not just a few people like YOU had tax creases, but everybody had tax increases.
These are desperate times and the incumbent commissioners are desperate to be re-elected. So, this is just politics as usual, the commissioners might say? I would say that such as this is “corruption” as usual. As always, here in Cleveland County.
Folks, wise up and throw the bums out of office in the 2020 elections. And elect three new commissioners who will make a difference for Cleveland County. Be sure to catch our article on who we recommend to vote for on election day. You will be glad you did. And so will your pocketbook!!