Times are tough nationwide, and they have been especially tough down Interstate 75 from Chattanooga in Dalton, Ga. The textile industry has suffered major job losses during the economic crisis, and unemployment is high in the Dalton area.
But Dalton Mayor David Pennington and the Dalton City Council are moving in the right direction with their determination not only to avoid tax increases, but to reduce taxes where possible. Backed by Pennington, the council recently voted unanimously to reduce the property tax rate -- the fourth straight time it has done so. The mayor also opposes an upcoming local referendum that would increase sales taxes.
"We want to make this the best place in Georgia to do business," he said after the vote on reducing Dalton's property tax rate. "We aren't there yet, but we are well on our way."
Whitfield County officials, too, recently approved a tax exemption on business inventory.
We applaud those efforts. Holding down taxes is a proven way to boost competitiveness.
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Just more rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic. Unfortunately, businesses also look at a community's demographics -half of the city's population cannot read, write, or speak the English language, and have an average of a 5th grade education. They may persuade a meat packing or lard rendering plant to relocate, but that is just digging the hole deeper.
Instead of exempting taxes on business inventory, they should be raising them. There is a lot more wrong with Dalton than just the bad economy, and it can all be pinned on the town's only industry. Raising taxes would accomplish two things: (1) Recovering the community's losses that are all directly related to the industry's practices.(2) Encouraging the industry to leave, so that the community can start all over, with a clean slate. Think of Dalton as an exersketch - when you screw up what you were attempting to do, just shake it, and start all over.
Wilder is a good calling card for the wilder ideas and suggestions rendered above. Editorial is right on its mark- Bold, prudent decisions by Mayor Pennington and Dalton City Council will bear great fruit. They seem to be taxing their brains as opposed to taxing everybody's wallets. Good sound practices result in good positive outcomes. Your demographic information is wrong. Prove it!!! Submit real data not negative opinions. Dalton has low property taxes, 5% sales tax, very good school systems, low crime rate and lots of entrepreneurial spirit. The only deep hole to be dug is to bury lousy ideas.
Wilder is dead on- and while his statistics suffer from hyperbole- they are representative of many's perception of Dalton. Using the phrase "Dalton publics schools" with "excellent" is oxymoronic at best. As a product of that once decent institution I think I am just in calling it abysmal now. My once beloved carpet industry decided two and one half decades ago that it was going to sell out the town for its own bottom line. I'm all about turning a profit and jobs- but they knowingly put us into an immigrant meat grinder. (Bare in mind this is not an anti-Latino rant, this exploited class could have come from anywhere- they were just the poorest and closest.) The mills saw cheap labor, free from workers comp and market forces that required increasingly higher wages for sweaty blue collar textile labor . . . and the old Democrat guard saw a way to turn NW Georgia "blue" within a generation of newly spawned legal set of entitlement dependent voters. It was a deal with the devil. Pennington and his people are the ones who sold us out, and we are left with the mess and an industry doomed to fail regardless.
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