The expiration on Monday of the 45-year-old city-county sales tax agreement has caused alarm among a number of vital civic and social services agencies that had been funded under the agreement. Many fear their budgets will be slashed because city and county officials have not agreed on an alternative funding plan.
To the extent that their fears are founded, however, that is the fault of county government, and county government alone. County leaders still refuse to acknowledge the countywide property tax base as the proper source of funding for countywide services.
The county’s big blindspot
County government’s core problem is that it has never acknowledged, or well served, its countywide obligations. With the exception of the county’s participation in developing the Enterprise South industrial park, county government has generally been content to act like its central governing function is to serve the unincorporated areas of the county. Never mind that 70 percent of county residents and most of the county’s businesses – all of which pay full county property taxes – are located in the county’s 10 municipalities; or, particularly, that fully half of the county’s residents and 80 percent of its businesses reside in Chattanooga.
The County Commission has relied, all too happily, on Chattanooga taxpayers to pay double taxes – first through their county property taxes, and then through their city property and sales taxes – for countywide services and civic agencies that serve the entire county’s population. One result is that city residents and businesses have been paying a highly disproportional 80 percent of the cost of countywide services.