Category Archives: politics

MARTA sales taxes & Alpharetta property taxes

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Sales taxes can be useful but they can also be an insidious method of taxation because it is so difficult for individuals to recognize the full cost. As discussed in this previous post the current MARTA tax in Fulton County amounts to $265 million a year and since there are about a million residents in Fulton it works out to a tax of about $265 per every man, woman and child.

If every person who lives in Fulton County was forced to write a check for their MARTA subsidy the 98% of people who rarely ride transit would be outraged. Even many of the 2% who actually ride heavy rail to work would complain about the $265 bill.

Imagine if a mother and father living in Alpharetta with two young children opened their mailbox to find a bill for their family’s $1060 share of the MARTA subsidy. But that would never happen because if it did heads down at the Gold Dome would roll faster than Richard Petty at Daytona.

But if diapers cost thirty cents more, each trip to the grocery store costs $2 more, the new refrigerator costs an extra $20 and 1% of everything else a family buys all year long adds up to $1060 they will probably never notice. It’s just a penny, right? That way MARTA gets $265 million a year and politicians get to keep their heads.

But when it comes to local property taxes people do get a bill in the mail each year. So for comparison’s sake let’s take a look at the size of Fulton County’s current 1% MARTA sales tax compared to the property taxes paid by the people of Alpharetta.

The 2016 budget for Alpharetta estimates property tax revenues of $18.8 million. With a population of 63,000 that works out to about $298 a year for every man, woman and child living in the city. The current MARTA sales tax costs about $265 per person in Fulton County. That means the property taxes in Alpharetta are only about $33 more than the cost of MARTA taxes to our average resident.

But if State Senator Brandon Beach’s 50% MARTA tax increase is enacted the cost per Fulton resident would skyrocket to almost $400 per person or $1600 for a family of four. Which means the average cost of MARTA taxes per Alpharetta resident would be $100 more a year than their property taxes.

Property taxes pay the salaries of the men and women in police cars and fire stations who work around the clock, 365 days a year to keep families, homes and businesses safe. Property taxes keep Alpharetta roads paved and traffic signals working. Local property taxes pay for nationally recognized recreation programs and parks that include an 8 mile Greenway lying along the shady banks of Big Creek.

Municipal property taxes pay a major portion of everything it takes to make Alpharetta one of the greatest places in the world to raise a family and do business. Yet if Senator Beach’s sales tax hike is enacted the average share of property taxes per resident would cost $100 less than what is collected to pay for MARTA services that only one person out of hundred people even use.

Put another way, if a $400 per person MARTA tax was distributed to the cities of Fulton County every year to cover essential services like police, fire departments and roads the City of Alpharetta could completely eliminate property taxes and have $6 million left over for transportation improvements. Now that would be a boon for economic development in North Fulton that MARTA could never provide.

 

Senator Beach Proposes 50% MARTA Tax Hike

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Every man, woman and child in Fulton county has to pay a 7% sales tax which means a hundred dollar pair of shoes really costs them $107. Of that $7 tax one dollar goes to subsidize MARTA. It may not sound like much but over the course of a year it adds up to about $265 million dollars.

Now two hundred and sixty five million dollars is a lot of money no matter how you look at it but in a county with a million residents it might be justified if the taxes were going to something everyone uses, needs or wants. Unfortunately in a county plagued by congestion only a tiny percentage of Fulton County residents use MARTA trains during rush hour.  The census charts below demonstrate only 2% of the county’s population ride MARTA trains to work.

Fulton commute chartFulton commute stats

More people work from home or even walk to work than ride MARTA trains but we pay hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize the trains. It is a perfect example of why Fulton County already has transportation issues. Politicians allocate transportation money based on politics rather than sound fiscal policy.

Which brings us  to this news story from 11 Alive News about Alpharetta’s own State Senator Brandon Beach who is proposing a 50% MARTA sales tax hike to expand trains into North Fulton. While I couldn’t disagree more with Senator Beach on this issue I do appreciate his consistency. He was pushing for heavy rail in his dual role as CEO of the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and President of the North Fulton CID long before he was elected to the state legislature.

But there is absolutely no objective justification for a massive tax increase to expand the least used, least efficient, least flexible and most expensive transit option available in Fulton County. Over the past few decades billions of dollars have been spent to subsidize a rail system which serves a tiny  portion of our population while the roads that support 100% of residents have been sorely neglected. Any further diversion of transportation money to MARTA trains will only make the problem worse.

A transportation tax increase of hundreds of millions of dollars on Alpharetta residents dedicated to trains that would make traffic here worse would be unconscionable so as an elected representative for 63,000 residents I will not support this effort. Instead I will vigorously oppose any legislation which would permit a 50% MARTA tax increase and encourage my fellow elected officials in Fulton County to do the same.

 

North Fulton Transportation Funding 2016

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The year 2016 promises to be a defining one for the City of Alpharetta and our neighbors in North Fulton County. In Alpharetta we expect to see construction begin on the land in front of City Hall as well as hundreds of homes and townhomes in the surrounding area. Construction of the second phase in Avalon has begun and we expect to see a new convention center take shape along with the hotel, stores, restaurants and apartments also planned on the site.

Around North Fulton our neighbors are also expecting great things. Sandy Springs has begun construction of its own town center and is welcoming the North American Headquarters for Mercedes to town. Roswell is working hard to reinvigorate their beautiful historic areas with new growth while the relative newbies of Johns Creek and Milton are in various stages of creating their own visions of their future.

These are exciting times to live and do business in North Fulton. We are blessed.

And as all of these great things are going on there is an underlying discussion taking place that will affect us all. How will we work as a region to build and maintain the roads and infrastructure needed to accommodate this growth and development?

For the past two decades North Fulton has experienced tremendous growth but the network of roads and infrastructure have not grown accordingly. Anyone who has driven in other metropolitan areas knows that traffic in North Fulton is not as bad as most other comparable cities but it is still an important issue.

That is why the Georgia state legislature passed House Bill 170 last year which raised taxes to fund infrastructure projects at the state level. The bill was heavily publicized after its passage but many people in North Fulton County still don’t know about a seldom discussed feature of the legislation.

HB 170 allows Fulton County to hold a county wide referendum to authorize an additional 1% sales tax increase for funding local transportation projects. There has been media coverage about this lately but many people still don’t realize how this discussion will impact our region for decades to come.

Current projections show that a 1% sales tax increase for 5 years could raise more than $83 million to be used for transportation projects in the city of Alpharetta alone. The total amount projected for all of North Fulton would be more than $500 million. That would approximately double the amount cities currently have to address transportation projects and could make a huge dent in the backlog of projects which have accumulated as fast growing cities struggled to keep up.

But will residents vote for a large tax increase if it’s for transportation? Would the money go to fund road improvements or will some of it go to pay even more than the current 1% MARTA sales tax subsidy? Would the tax increase be limited to 5 years as proposed in the legislation? Or will the county and cities agree to extend the tax for 40 years to allow bonds for expanding MARTA?

These are all questions that have yet to be answered. However if the referendum is going to be placed on the November ballot these questions and many others will have to be answered soon. And those answers will go a long way in determining what the City of Alpharetta and North Fulton County look like for the next 10, 20, even 50 years.

So over the next few months I intend to explore many of the questions posed by the proposed Tsplost tax increase proposal. Hopefully this will be a constructive forum for us to discuss what promises to be the most important issue of 2016, North Fulton Transportation funding.

 

 

 

 

The $100 Emission Inspection Challenge

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Every year around their birthday car owners in metro Atlanta are required to have their automobile emissions inspected before they can renew their car tag. This is required by the federal government purportedly to reduce pollution in Atlanta and the last time I checked the annual cost to taxpayers was between $80 million and $100 million.

Five years ago on my birthday I was so annoyed at having to spend $25 to have an emission inspected that I decided to find out if there was any evidence the millions of dollars we pay for the inspections make any difference.

I started with Google but there was no evidence on the internet. Nothing at all on the world wide web to scientifically prove metro Georgia’s emissions inspection program reduces pollution by even .000000000000000000001%. But the federal government couldn’t possibly make people waste so much money for no reason, could it?

Next I called the office of State Senator Dan Moody who represented me at the time. His staff was very nice and helpful but they knew of no such evidence themselves and referred me to a person in the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

The lady at the Department of Natural Resources was also very friendly and helpful but did not have the evidence I needed either. However she did refer me to a report issued by researchers at Georgia Tech which was supposed to support the tens of millions of dollars spent on inspections.

Unfortunately the report only showed that pollution levels around Atlanta were lower than they used to be. There was no evidence at all that emissions inspections had any impact nor any quantifiable result for what hundreds of millions of dollars had accomplished. You can read an article about the report here: http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/vehicle_emissions.htm

But despite the lack of supporting evidence I didn’t want to believe the federal government was forcing Georgians to spend up to $100 million a year for no reason so I wrote to Michael O. Rodgers, Ph.D. the Principal Research Scientist and Adjunct Professor School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology who directed the research:

Mr. Rodgers,

I am currently doing research on the effectiveness of Georgia’s emission inspection program and came across an article which sites your research. Here is the link to the article: http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/vehicle_emissions.htm

The article explains how your research found lower emissions in Georgia but it doesn’t really explain how a cause and effect relationship was established between the emission levels and the inspection program. Is the underlying research publicly available so I can better understand how you determined the specific contribution of the emissions inspection program.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me in proving the effectiveness of Georgia’s emission inspection process.

Jimmy Gilvin

Dr. Rodgers responded to my request and for several weeks promised to have an assistant send the evidence I requested. We even spoke on the phone, He seemed very nice but for several weeks Dr. Rodgers would assure me the information was forthcoming yet it never showed up.

I continued to follow up on the missing report until Dr. Rodgers stopped returning my calls and I realized what I now believe to be the truth: There is absolutely no scientific evidence to show hundreds of millions of dollars in Georgia emission inspection fees have reduced pollution one bit.

So here is the $100 Emission Inspection Challenge: The first person who can demonstrate there is scientifically valid evidence that the tens of millions of dollars spent on emissions inspections have reduced pollution in the metro Atlanta area by more than .000000000000000000001% will get $100.

When a person starts with the premise that annoying federal mandates are ridiculous and based on political agendas rather than facts you will rarely be wrong. Prove me wrong in this case and I will gladly fork over the cash just to know that the federal government hasn’t really wasted more than a billion dollars of our money on a charade.

Fulton County Deeds Former Library Property To Alpharetta

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Yesterday an extraordinary example of cooperation between Fulton County and the City of Alpharetta occurred. After the City of Alpharetta had donated land for a new library downtown the Fulton County Commission returned the favor by donating the old library site back to the city. Historically our two political entities have had trouble working together so it is nice to see that in recent years we have been able to look past political differences and cooperate in ways that benefit all of our constituents.

I can honestly say that both our Fulton County Commissioners and the Library Board were helpful and gracious in meetings I attended as we looked for ways to work together rather than just score political brownie points. It is never easy for two political entities to put politics aside but I applaud Fulton County Chairman John Eaves, Vice Chairman Liz Hausmann and the entire Fulton County Commission for their efforts in this case. I would especially like to thank Commissioner Bob Ellis for taking the time to meet with me about this topic on several occasions.

Below is a press release issued by the City of Alpharetta yesterday:

In action taken this morning, the Fulton County Commission voted to deed roughly 3 acres of land and a building located at the corner of Mayfield Road and Canton Street to the City of Alpharetta. The property is the location of the former public library that was closed earlier this year.
“We are pleased that the property will remain in public hands so that it can continue to serve as an amenity to the citizens of Alpharetta,” said Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle. “We are grateful to the members of the County Commission for today’s action and for fulfilling the assurances previously made to us.”

In December 2013 the City of Alpharetta donated 3 acres of land in its City Center Project to Fulton County to serve as the site for the new Alpharetta Branch Library. Shortly after making the donation the City began conversations with members of the County Commission to express their interest in gaining control of the Canton Street site.

The City plans to hold an open house at Alpharetta City Hall beginning at 7:00 PM on Monday, September 21 to begin a public conversation on the future use of the Canton Street property. The purpose of that session is to provide Alpharetta citizens with an opportunity to share their ideas for how the property should be used.

We’ve Come a Long Way…

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It is hard to believe I first asked Alpharetta voters for the privilege of serving on their city council just four years ago. A lot has changed since then.

When I decided to run for office Alpharetta’s unemployment rate was 7.5%. Our office space vacancy rate was nearly 20% while residential property values had dropped by about 20%.

In that environment I took office and immediately began working with the mayor and council to revive Alpharetta’s local economy. We hired an Economic Development Coordinator and pursued innovative tools like the Opportunity Zone incentives which helped attract the Avalon development as well as major new employers like Fiserve and Halyard.

We aggressively sought a new technical school to maintain our skilled workforce and complement our award winning local schools. We began building a downtown Alpharetta our community could be proud of with special events and a restaurant scene to draw people from all over North Fulton.

Now four years into my service Alpharetta’s unemployment rate hovers near historic lows at 4.8%. The thousands of new jobs we attracted have reduced vacancy rates by half and for the first time in seven years new corporate campuses are being proposed to add more jobs in our thriving business ecosystem.

And during that extraordinary growth I never lost sight of how crucial it is to preserve what makes Alpharetta the best place in Georgia to raise a family and do business. I have consistently voted against hundreds of the apartments which further crowd our roadways and schools. I have devoted millions of dollars toward improving roadways and other infrastructure to accommodate growth. I promised to pursue fiscally responsible growth while rejecting tax increases and that is exactly what I have done.

So yes, we have come a long way from where we were 4 years ago… but there is a lot of work left to do. That is why I now ask the people of Alpharetta to extend to me the honor of serving them one more term on city council. With their blessing I will dedicate the next four years to continue representing this city honorably while fostering growth we can all live with. I hope I have earned your votes once again and appreciate any support you can lend in this effort.

Sincerely,                                                                                                                                           Jim Gilvin                                                                                                                               Alpharetta City Council, Post 4

Thank you, Alpharetta

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In case you haven’t heard, I won Tuesday’s Alpharetta City Council election by a huge margin.

We could never have won this election without the tremendous effort of dedicated volunteers and the encouragement we received from many of you. I will never lose sight of that fact as I serve you over the next four years and I will be eternally grateful for this opportunity.

And now that the challenge of a political campaign is over it is time to focus our efforts on the challenges ahead. Voters approved the new City Center project so the next four years should be exciting as we implement a plan to completely revitalize our downtown community. I will also work hard to improve Alpharetta’s traffic situation while keeping our taxes low and working to restrain high density development that will negatively impact our schools and quality of life.

There is a lot to be done and it won’t be easy. But neither was winning an election against an entrenched incumbent who enjoyed the support of the political establishment. With your help we achieved that victory Tuesday so there is no reason to think we can’t meet the new challenges ahead.

I know that as an elected representative of over 50,000 people there is no way to satisfy every person every time but I give you my word that I will always do these three things:

1)     I will always listen to your concerns.

2)     I will always keep an open mind.

3)     I will always be honest with you regarding my positions.

Regardless of the issue in question you deserve those three things from your elected representatives and you have my word that you will get them from me.

And I hope that all of you will feel comfortable calling me or emailing if you have any questions or concerns over the next four years. My cell phone number is 404 271-2716 and my personal email address is jimgilvin@bellsouth.net . Please accept this note as an open invitation to reach out to me whenever you wish.

Thank you again for this opportunity to serve you on city council. I am truly humbled by this honor and will serve you to the very best of my ability.

Sincerely,

Jim Gilvin

An open and honest debate

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Last night the Alpharetta High School debate team hosted a candidate’s forum. In my remarks to the crowd I pointed out that open, honest debate is what elections are supposed to be about. I emphasized the word “supposed” because the political discourse in this city has become anything but an open and honest debate.

Almost two months ago I declared my candidacy for Alpharetta City Council post 4 because I knew my opponent’s track record and could not bear the thought of her running unopposed. At the time I knew it would be difficult to win a race against an entrenched, establishment candidate but I felt the people of Alpharetta deserved to have another option and regardless of the outcome I looked forward to an open and honest debate about the future of our city.

For the last two months I have done everything in my power to keep this campaign focused on the future of Alpharetta. Scandals and allegations have surrounded my opponent from nearly day one yet I have refused to get caught up in mudslinging. Instead I have devoted all of my time and energy to getting out my message: growth we can live with, leadership on traffic issues and low taxes.

But an open and honest debate takes two people and today’s Alpharetta Revue is a perfect example of what I have been up against.

Page 24 of the October 27, 2011 edition of the Alpharetta Revue contains a candidate profile that my opponent submitted for publication. In Mrs. Oakes’ profile she claims, “Then we must clean up some problems created before I arrived. For example, Prospect Park and Windward Mill were both voted on by council before I arrived”.

That statement is blatantly false. Mrs. Oakes did vote for the Windward Mill development which added seven condominium towers to one of the most congested intersections in Alpharetta. I know that because I was there and it is a matter of public record. But you don’t have to take my word for it, just turn to page 5 of the same paper.

On page 5 there is an article explaining how Mrs. Oakes publicly denied voting for Windward Mill during a debate. Then when the reporter confronted her with the truth, Mrs. Oakes quickly changed her story and responded, “I think it was the right thing at the right location.”

So on page twenty four Mrs. Oakes claims that she did not vote for a high density mixed use project and asks voters to re-elect her so she can clean up the mess left by her predecessor. But on page five Mrs. Oakes admits the truth and defends her vote for the project by saying it was the right thing to do.

It is simply impossible to conduct an open and honest debate with that kind of politician.

Alpharetta is at a critical crossroads of our future. These are challenging times and we can’t afford four more years of false claims with abrupt position switches.

We need leadership. For more than a decade I provided that leadership in protecting the quality of life that makes Alpharetta special. I have the track record to prove it.

So I ask you to please vote for Jim Gilvin, Alpharetta City Council Post 4.

The People of Alpharetta Deserve the Truth

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On April 28, 2008 my opponent, Cheryl Oakes, voted to approve a high density mixed use project which will eventually be built at the corner of Windward Parkway and Northpoint Parkway in Alpharetta. I know this because the project called for seven high-rise condo towers to be built in my children’s school district and after months of trying to prevent its approval I was sitting in the audience when the vote was taken.

I mention this now because the Downtown Alpharetta Trade Association held a candidate forum last night and at the event I stated that my opponent for City Council Post 4 had voted to approve that project. Then something surreal happened.

My opponent stood up in front of a room full of Alpharetta voters and blatantly misstated the facts about her record.

Ms. Oakes told the people that she had not voted for the project at all. Ms. Oakes then went on to make the bizarre claim that it was actually her predecessor on council that had voted for the project before Cheryl took office in 2008.

I was stunned that a political candidate could stand up in front of a crowd and so blatantly misstate the facts.  The truth is a matter of public record.

Cheryl Oakes began her term on Alpharetta City Council on January 7, 2008 as reported here. The vote on the high density mixed use project was taken on April 28, 2008 as reported here. The public record shows that all city council members were present at the time and the vote was unanimous as you can see for yourself here.

Ms. Oakes’ predecessor was actually at the DATA forum as well and both she and a current mayoral candidate confirmed my account of the events.

There is no question that my opponent voted to add seven condominium towers to that corner of Windward Parkway. And now there is no question that she blatantly misstated the facts to the voters of Alpharetta.

I take no pleasure in pointing out what my opponent has done… but the people of Alpharetta deserve the truth.

And as a candidate for Alpharetta City Council Post 4 it is my duty to make sure they know the truth before voting on Tuesday, November 8.

The future of Alpharetta

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Tonight the City of Alpharetta had planned to approve a new Comprehensive Land Use Plan that would forever change the complexion of our community. The plan was designed to serve as a blueprint for development in Alpharetta for the next twenty years and you can find the full report here on the city’s website. But late last week the city unexpectedly postponed the vote for the proposal and it will now be decided after the November election.

Why the change?

In recent years the people of Alpharetta have been busy trying to support their families in the middle of a devastating recession and very few have had the time or energy to follow the minutiae of local zoning issues. That is why I have worked so hard to help my fellow Alpharettans understand organizations like the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority and the Georgia Department of Transportation have been busy working with developers and Alpharetta’s Community Development Department to devise a new blueprint for our city. A blueprint which calls for thousands and thousands of high density housing units to be added within mixed use developments all along Northpoint Parkway, Haynes Bridge Road and Highway 9.

If that blueprint is approved in its current form the future of Alpharetta will be one of more traffic, lower quality of life and endless cycles of school redistricting forced on our children. To help you see what I am talking about I have illustrated the vast acreage which would be designated for high density and mixed use residential complexes in the new plan. You can click on the image to enlarge it:

Alpharetta would never be the same.

People who support the urbanization of Alpharetta have tried to minimize the effects of this drastic change but Alpharettans need only look at what happened to Sandy Springs when this kind of development occurred there. The schools suffered, the quality of life completely changed and the traffic is worse than ever before despite the addition of four MARTA stations.

Fortunately our current election season has brought a great deal of scrutiny upon the revised land use plan and as a result none of our elected officials seem anxious to vote for the proposal before facing the voters next month. Although our current mayor and city council have unanimously supported the development plan in the past, some of them may be having second thoughts. So the city has decided to postpone the decision until after the election

But let there be no misunderstanding. My opponent fully supports the plan to urbanize Alpharetta. In her four years on city council she has already approved two enormous high density mixed use projects which are stalled by the economy. And to quote her campaign website,”Cheryl pushed a new comprehensive land use plan…”.

The choice is clear. If you want our city’s future to be more high density developments with thousands and thousands of high-rise condos or apartments… you should vote for my opponent.

On the other hand if you want a city council representative whose vision of Alpharetta is one that will always be a special place to live… you should vote for Jim Gilvin on November 8th.

It really is that simple. Thank you for your support.