Monday’s meeting with county leaders and the press regarding the refunded tax appeals left everyone scratching their heads.
Seemingly, the rarely-seen group of County Manager Alicia Vaughn, County Chairman Bruce Palmer, Tax Assessor Chairperson Mariah Holbrooks and Clerk of Court David Wall should have had the answers somewhere between them. Instead, we left the meeting confused and confounded, still wondering what happened to the $333,000-plus the government lost on what appears to be a paperwork snafu.
Placing blame at this point is irrelevant, as pointing fingers at who is most responsible for the error is not going to bring the money back. However, it was clear everyone involved was looking for someone else to blame.
Lack of training.
COVID-19.
“Co-mingled” stacks of paper.
The county made it clear at the outset of the meeting the commissioners and manager’s office were completely separate from all these operations, tossing the ball to Holbrooks and Wall, who both struggled to put into words what exactly happened—or didn’t.
All parties made it clear that the investigation is still ongoing as to where the ball was dropped, but again, that only matters in the sense that it can be patched up for the future.
Habersham County has a litany of financial issues facing it over the coming years, and we cannot afford to just let more than $333,000 fly out the window. We have a dramatic lack of large commercial properties in this county, and we have to maximize their value to our government and our citizens. Many of the large properties we do have are questionably assessed, hence the investigation called for into the performance of our tax assessor’s office by the county commissioners.
Those results are in, and whether the county will receive the full report before or after Christmas is irrelevant. What is relevant is what the report will say and what procedures will be taken up to get our tax base assessed correctly.
Many officials recently have said raising taxes could be inevitable to fixing some of our problems, but before we go running back to our homeowners’ pocketbooks for more than loose change, it’s time we got our assessments right.
And as for this $300K snafu, ownership is leadership. Even if the ball was dropped by someone else, seeing one of these public leaders step up and say “You know what? We made a mistake, and we’re sorry, and we’re going to do better” would have been gratifying to see.
Communication is one of the many keys to turning our county around.