July 12, 2024
By: Dwayne Page
Should DeKalb County borrow up to $65 million through the issuance of general obligation bonds for the development and construction of a judicial center/jail?
The voters of DeKalb County may get to answer that question at the ballot box in the November election but even so they won’t be able to force a repeal of the 51-cent property tax increase for debt service levied by the county commission with passage of the 2024-25 budget last month.
With less than a week until the deadline for turning in signatures, organizers and volunteers of a petition drive Thursday afternoon turned over to County Clerk James L. (Jimmy) Poss, as required by law, names of 2,471 presumptive registered voters who have signed that they want a public referendum on the bond issue. Aside from those submitted Thursday, Poss said another petition had already been turned in to him a few days ago with eight names and others are possibly still being circulated in the community. Poss said he will accept other petitions that may come in prior to next week’s deadline before he is required to turn them all over to the election commission, which has a limited time frame for checking and verifying the signatures.
Petitioners are concerned, upset, and in some cases downright angry with the county commission and county mayor for saddling them with a 51 cent tax hike, only a year after imposing a 27 cent increase, and for taking action to borrow money to build either a new 190 bed jail or more likely a judicial center that many don’t want or believe is needed.
As part of the bond resolution, the public was given 20 days to file a protest from the date of publication of the notice in the newspaper which was Wednesday, June 26.
“The public has 20 days from the date of publication to file with the county clerk a petition signed by at least 10% of the registered voters of the county (1,361) protesting the issuance of the bonds”, the public notice stated.
Although the signatures still have to be verified the petition effort with already at least 2,471 names appears to have more than exceeded the 10% threshold in order for the protest to proceed to a referendum.
The petition drive was launched last month only a couple of days after the county commission approved an initial and detailed resolution authorizing the issuance of general obligation bonds not to exceed $65 million for the development and construction of a judicial center/jail as well as the 51-cent property tax increase for debt service to fund it. In each case, the commission was deadlocked on the vote at 7 to 7 but County Mayor Matt Adcock, as Chairman of the Commission, cast the tie breaker in favor of passage.
Jon Slager, a DeKalb County native and Lascassas resident and attorney, assisted in organizing the petition drive and in a prepared statement Thursday said he is pleased with the overwhelming public response.
“On behalf of the people that asked me to assist with this, thank you to everyone who worked so hard supporting this petition. The response by the people of this county has been overwhelming. Because of the hard work of so many, nearly double the number of signatures required have been obtained, and the deadline is still several days away. Ultimately, the DeKalb County Court Clerk will send all the petitions to the election commission next week and that is who will do an official count,” said Slager
“The people I got to speak with over the last few weeks had a genuine concern about the real costs of a sixty-five-million-dollar criminal justice center. Even at an interest rate of just four percent, that sixty-five million dollars would balloon to over one hundred and ten million dollars. Then where does the money come from for the additional costs of nearly doubling the corrections staff? Are the taxpayers also being asked to pay over three-hundred thousand dollars to Steve Bates (county’s fiscal agent) for issuing these bonds? What about the threat of imminent domain and taking someone’s property? The true costs of this project are staggering and will undoubtedly leave other necessary projects unfunded for decades without additional future tax increases,” added Slager.
“When is it ever wrong for the public to have a voice in government decisions,” said Dennis Stanley, one of the volunteers in the petition drive.
“I saw the people’s voice in action. The days I helped with the drive the people who signed the petition were of various ages and socio-economic backgrounds. As expected, comments varied on what to do with local tax revenues from building a new school to better roads, but a criminal justice center did not appear to be high on their priority list”.
“In short, the people were obviously not happy with recent actions of the county commission as evidenced by the number of signatures on the petition, he added.
County Commissioner Beth Pafford, another volunteer in the petition drive, downplayed her role saying only she wanted the public to be aware of it.
“My involvement in this was minimal but I felt I had to let the people know that they can do something about this,” said Commissioner Pafford. “I feel strongly we have other options that we have not explored thoroughly enough and this plan with this much money for 30 years is what people have a problem with. If all of these petitions are cleared, people can vote to decide whether they want the county to move forward with taking out the $65 million bond that would be paid off over 30 years to support a new jail and justice center,” she said.
The action by the county commission and mayor to move forward last month came after months of discussion and planning to address long standing deficiencies at the jail and annex as defined by the Tennessee Corrections Institute in order to maintain state certification.