Residents In Fulton Cities Pay for S. Fulton's Roadwork

Policy held over from county's incorporated days makes city residents pay to fix roads in unicorporated area

By D.L. BENNETTThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution / www.ajc.com

Fewer than 5 percent of Fulton County residents live outside one of the county's 14 cities.
Still, all county homeowners are being taxed to pay for roadwork inside the small island of unincorporated south Fulton.

This year the proposed 2008 budget sets aside $7.6 million for public works. All the money is programmed to be spent inside an area that holds 45,000 people in a county estimated at more than 980,000.

It's a policy that's a political holdover from when the county was largely unincorporated —and a policy due to be challenged in 2008.

"It's just wrong," said Roswell Mayor Jere Wood. "It's a city service at this point. I expect you will have all the north Fulton mayors objecting to this."

The general fund budget comes from taxes collected countywide and pays for services that are supposed to benefit all county residents. A separate account pays for municipal services in south Fulton like police, fire and planning.

Wood has argued for years that public works spending by Fulton needed to be paid only by unincorporated residents since city residents already pay the cities for those services.
For the last decade, Fulton has defended public works money in the general fund by saying everyone in the county benefits from road work, storm sewer fixes and other projects. That policy, though, was adopted long before all of north Fulton and most of south Fulton incorporated.

Four new cities have formed over the past two years.
County Manager Tom Andrews said the county's original position still stands even if the unincorporated area has been dramatically cut and continues to shrink through annexation.
Commission chairman John Eaves, who helped draft the budget, initially gave a similar explanation. When pressed on how that logic still holds today, he would only say, "Next question."

Commissioner Lynne Riley, who represents north Fulton, said she would fight the proposed budget on behalf of north Fulton residents who shouldn't be paying taxes to pave roads on which they will never ride.

"I have great concerns," Riley said.If the cost for public works gets moved out of the general fund, some would save and others would pay.

North Fulton residents and south Fulton residents who live inside city limits would be free from paying $7.6 million for work many likely will not benefit from.

But the already burdened south Fulton tax district would be even further in the red. Eaves' budget proposal already shows the south Fulton tax district with a gap of $11.6 million. The budget predicts $36 million in revenue and $47.6 million in spending. The gap is made up through transfers from savings and other funds.