Do you like being lied to? Most people don’t, especially from their elected officials. Let’s take North Augusta’s property tax increases in the last few years (increase of 5.5 mills). The elected officials like the mayor and city council members love to tell their constituents that increasing the millage rate has nothing to do with Project Jackson, a/k/a Riverside Village, with its publicly funded stadium, parking decks and conference center in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. That’s right kids, the city has found the free lunch. You can take on $69 million in debt and no tax payer is affected!
Opinion
Let’s just put the lie to that. Either elected officials are lying or they are woefully ignorant. When you create a special tax district like Riverside Village, you commit to dedicating all the taxes generated in that district to pay for the increased debt. In other words the properties in Hammond’s Ferry and the River Club and the Medac Building pay their taxes into the pool of money dedicated to paying off the debt. Their taxes are not available to help pay for funding the city itself.
Oh, but wait a minute, they will say. The Riverside Village development would not have existed if there weren’t a special tax district. That’s not true either. Look at the city’s own data. When they started the stadium boondoggle, the existing properties (Hammond’s Ferry, River Club, Medac, etc.) generated $356,000 in city taxes and were projected to grow to $516,000 by 2022. That $4.5 million would have been collected over those 10 years, negating any necessity to raise taxes.
You may be overjoyed to have a stadium and minor league baseball, but let’s just admit among ourselves that it comes with a millage increase to pay back debt nobody voted for.
Steve Donohue
North Augusta
