ECDA Vice Chair Mike Holzknecht recently published a letter in the East Cobb Patch on the property tax exemption for Cobb senior citizens and the need for more transparency in the whole tax process.
Dear Rep. Cooper: Thanks but no thanks
Posted on East Cobb Patch May 13, 2011 at 10:22am
Dear Representative Cooper,
Thanks but no thanks.
On your letter to me dated March 17, 2011, you reminded me that since I had just turned 62, I no longer have to pay that part of my property taxes that goes to support Cobb Public Schools.
I have two reservations with your offer. First, like your Tea Party supporters, I am against waste, fraud, and abuse. I contacted The Tax Commissioner’s office to see if I could get a list of those who are exempt from school taxes. The list might indicate duplications, fraud, and error. I was told that there is no list and that the “IAS” computer system they have is not capable of generating such a list.
While there may not be the first error or fraud in the system, like Ronald Regan, my motto is “trust but verify.” There is no way to verify the accuracy of the system, if we cannot look at the exempt list. I suggest that you and your fellow Cobb representatives get together and devise a better law with more transparency. If it was required by law, our Tax Commissioner’s office would have this information and make it easily available to the public. What if you found enough wasted money to hire back all the teachers, get rid of the trailers, and eliminate furloughs?
After you fix this defective law, my second reservation is that I like quality public education. My company brought nearly one thousand jobs to Cobb County in 1995 because of a number of reasons. Quality public education was at the top of the list. Good public schools maintain the quality of our community and the resale values of our homes. The small advantage that I get from not paying school taxes is more than offset by the depreciation of my property value. Quality public education will attract more businesses to Cobb and further enhance my property value and lift the quality of life in our community. Financially starving the best part of our county, our public school system, reminds me of another saying, “Penny wise. Pound foolish.”
I refuse to abandon my quality public school system. I will proudly pay my school taxes. For those who are financially strapped, a transparent school tax exemption is a very good idea. If you find enough savings from waste, fraud, and abuse in the system, I’ll be glad to accept a tax reduction, as long as it does not hurt our school system.
Thank you,
Mike Holzknecht