Monticello Council Discusses Service Delivery Strategy

The Monticello City Council met for a called meeting last Thursday to discuss the Service Delivery Strategy (SDS) and to present a new personnel policy to the council.

The meeting was short with the main focus on the SDS. Mayor pro tem, Stone Workman, ran the meeting as Mayor Bryan Standifer was absent. The discussion began with a summary from Mr. Workman that stated that the Supreme Court was now on the side of local small town councils on the issues of double taxation. He explained that he’d done some research on what taxes were taken in Jasper County and where those monies were spent regarding roads, code enforcement, and other services.

He said that the information received for taxation was from the county manager and the tax commissioner. The question was asked to them how much has the county spent on roads in unincorporated vs. incorporated areas in the last five years. The answer was $9 million, none of which was spent in the city of Monticello.

Mr. Workman explained that citizens in the city are paying taxes that are not used for the city’s services and therefore are not beneficial to the citizens of Monticello. Mr. Workman asked that the services all be turned over to the county to manage.

He also suggested that, as supported by the Supreme Court, there could be separate tax districts with taxes broken out by percentages and the funding for the city services would be given to the city.

Councilman David Wease spoke to the audience and council and explained that he wasn’t in favor of the separation. He asked that there be a poll of the council members that agree with the proposition.

He said that, “we’re all on the same team here. We’re a community, together with the county.” Mr. Wease expressed that, “the commissioners have a budget just as we do and they struggle every year as well, as they still have to pay their bills. If you create separate tax districts what happens is our relatives and loved ones that live outside of this special tax district will have to pay a larger tax burden in order for the BOC to meet their obligations.”

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Mr. Workman replied, “That’s true, but the people that you represent will pay less. And the people that you don’t represent will have to pay more. But it will be spread out among 13,000 people vs. 2,000 people. ”

Mr. Wease said that he understood but as a general consensus the people that he talks to say, “if it’s not broke don’t fix it.” He’s saying that he understands the facts, but “we’re a small community and everybody is a family here and I just don’t agree with it and don’t think that it fits our community.”

Councilwoman Jenny Murphy said, “my thing is that I really don’t want to push them on the code enforcement issue. I don’t see that they’re making a whole lot of headway in the county and I just feel that that would be an injustice to our citizens for the county to take that over.”

Mayor pro tem Workman said, “We’re not talking about that anymore. We’re talking about them returning the money that we send to them and give to us, because we can do a better job with it. I don’t want them taking over the streets either, because we can do a better job at it. We can’t subsidize people who live outside the city of Monticello anymore.”

“Here are the facts, and I couldn’t serve as an elected official and look after the people that I am elected to serve, I just couldn’t do it,” said Mr. Workman. “This is a defining moment.”

Cynthia Miller, Councilwoman asked, “are you saying that we do not pay county taxes for the roads? Is that what you’re proposing?”

Mr. Workman said, “not on incorporated roads, no.”

Cynthia Miller, Councilwoman, said “I don’t understand. The city is in the county.”

Mr. Workman said “that it’s not up to us to decide what the county will do. This is a once every 10 year decision as to what to do. I think that this is a very easy way to do it. It wouldn’t start until next year with their budget. There just wouldn’t be anything coming in. This is irrefutable double taxation.”

Ms. Miller said, “we know that this is something discussed every 10 years. I want you to think about what will probably happen. We will be paying more to the county in our taxes. It will be compensated and will be taken from somewhere else. We will still be looking at it, it just won’t be coming at us from that direction, but they will roll it over into another part of our taxes to compensate from what we’re taking out.”

“They’re going to get their money. You can’t just take money from somewhere and say it’ll go away. If they’ve already budgeted they know what they’re looking at so if we should do that and take some away, they’re going to come back and get their money. It’s almost to a certain degree going to be putting a hardship on all citizens so we need to look at this in a full 360. We’ve got to look at the whole thing and how it’s going to affect everyone.”