Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles says he will veto any property tax increase county commissioners send to his desk.
County commissioners are currently debating whether to raise property taxes by as much as 45 cents — or $120 per $100,000 in the value of a home.
“That’s crazy,” Ogles told The Tennessee Star Tuesday.
Maury County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the state, if not the country, because of people moving south, out of Nashville. Some people say this new tax revenue is needed to help pay for all the new growth.
Instead of higher property taxes, Ogles said he and other local officials thought up an alternative solution to bring in more revenue.
“We agreed as county mayor and city mayors to a sales tax referendum to help fund building projects for the schools,” Ogles said.
“If you want new schools then we can raise the sales tax a half a penny to make it equivalent to Williamson County and, I presume, Rutherford County. That’ll be during the March presidential primary. The people will decide.”
Ogles also told The Star he’s working with state officials so Maury County can eventually impose impact fees on new construction — as another revenue source. He said the state’s 2006 County Powers Act restricts his county’s ability to implement impact fees. Under the law, counties that had impact fees prior to 2006 may still use them, Ogles said.
“We are growing just as fast as Williamson County and Rutherford County, and, yet, I have neither the population of Rutherford County nor the income of Williamson County and yet we’re building the same things at the same rate,” Ogles said.
Right now, it takes 12 of the 22 county commissioners to override any Ogles’ veto.
County Commissioner Craig Harris said he and his colleagues must finalize a budget by next month, otherwise the county will revert to the last fiscal year budget. Last year’s fiscal budget would not fund two new public schools that are already underway, Harris said.
Maury County School Board member Bettye Kinser, meanwhile, told The Star that school board members want a property tax increase to help increase teacher pay.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Andy Ogles” by Andy Ogles. Background Photo “Maury County Courthouse” by Brent Moore. CC BY 2.0.
Sure wish he would move to Sumner County.
This is a very sad commentary on what it means to live in Maury County. Increases in sales tax only keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor. Property taxes are fair taxes because if you can afford to live in a $1,000,000 house, you can pay an additional $1,200 in property tax. However, a person who works as non-skilled labor making $10 an hour on a less than 40-hour week will be impacted by the 50 cents more that they have to pay on their $100 grocery bill. Because you see, they also have to pay for doctor appointments out of pocket, they may not have paid time off and they may have to work three additional jobs just to make ends meet.
Also, I would hope that Maury County would want to grow their own, but if letting students sit in bat guano and mold in an over-crowded classroom or have ceiling tiles fall on them in gym is the way it is going to be, I don’t see that happening.
This actually makes sense 👍❤️👏👏👏👏👏
I encourage you to go to the next Maury County Commission meeting and have your voice heard. Merely disputing on social media has zero impact. When these meeting are vacant of tax paying citizens, they vote any way they see fit. When tax paying citizens attend it holds those in leadership accountable. Those meetings should be standing room only. Unfortunately not the case. Be part of the change you want!
It is nice to have an elected official that gives the taxpayers a direct voice in the process.
Funny, that County Commissioners can never come up with any solutions to problems except raising property taxes. Time to elect some people with the ability to be creative and innovative. I am sure there is a lot of waste in the current budget that could be cut back along with some of the proposals from Mayor Ogles. Have you ever taken a look at your Level 2 MOE for the schools. You might find that you can claw back money there as well. Maybe not but most Commissions do not even know about Level 2 MOE for the schools. Using it in my county would have enabled us to claw back over $100K.