City of Edison residents brace for potential increase on property taxes

EDISON — Tia Ingram returned to her hometown in 2019 and opened her barbershop in 2020. She hoped she could be an example for young people in her community, something the 38-year-old said she never had growing up.

“I know that a lot of people look up to me because I’m one of the few people that have left and come back,” Ingram said. “A lot of people leave and they never come back.”

Ingram owns her home right next to her tiny barber shop, Radical Kutz, on Turner Street, one of Edison’s central roads.

Ingram left Edison to go to college and then later served in the military. She’s been all over the world.

“But every time I come home, it’s like the same thing,” Ingram said. “If you want to see better, you have to be willing to do better.”

In the wake of a financial crisis that is plaguing her hometown — $450,000 in debt, according to Edison’s attorney, Tommy Coleman, and five years of missing city audits — Ingram is pushing for better.

She’s been active with a group of Edison residents who attend city council meetings and push the mayor and council members for transparency and accountability. Those are characteristics that have always been lacking, she said.

“For one, my parents and my parents’ parents, they didn’t have the ability to ask the right questions,” Ingram said. “A lot of the time they had to be at work, so they weren’t able to attend the city council meetings.”

Now, there’s a new era of people, she said. It’s a generation of people who’ve gone off to see the world and are now returning.

“We are able to ask the right questions, to get the ball rolling on things that should have been open and transparent all along,” Ingram said.

However, she and other small business owners and homeowners are bracing for impact as Edison prepares its 2023 budget with talks of high tax increases.

Mark Strickland, Calhoun County’s former chief appraiser, said he believes Edison’s mayor and council members knew about the city’s financial turmoil back in 2017. He said he attended a 2017 council meeting to advise the city on setting its millage, or property tax, rate for the year, he said.

“They were trying to figure out how high they could go before they were capped out on their millage rate,” Strickland said. “Now, I was not expecting that to be the question at the time.”

He was working with the school board, which had a 20 mill cap at the time, he said.

“So in response to the question, ‘How high can we go?’ I said, ‘I think it’s 20 mills,” Strickland said.

He later found out the actual cap was 30 mills, but he said he never informed the city of this. The city promptly set its rate at 20 mills, an increase from the 2016 rate of about 16.8 and kept it there until 2020, Strickland said.

At a July 10 meeting, the mayor and city attorney threw around the idea of a 5- to 10-mill increase for 2023, Strickland said. This would work itself out to being a 26% to 54% tax increase over and above any value increases property owners may receive from the tax assessor’s office, he said.

Many homeowners pay taxes as part of their home-loan escrow accounts. As taxes increase, loan payments increase. Strickland predicted a sharp millage increase would lead to an increase in loan defaults.

“That’s going to hurt,” he said. “Given the fact that a lot of people in Edison are living from paycheck to paycheck, that kind of a tax increase is going to mean there are people who are not going to be able to pay their taxes.”

The city’s ineligibility to receive state grants due to its failure to submit the legally required annual city audits also creates potential problems, Strickland said. In the 2023 legislative session, Georgia funded the governor’s homestead relief credit for the first time in 12 years through House Bill 18. Any individual in Georgia who is under a homestead exemption will have a portion of their taxes paid by the state. However, this money is in the form of a grant applied to cities, counties and schools. So while these homeowners are still able to receive funds through county and school taxes, they may be ineligible through city taxes.

“It’s highly unlikely they’re going to get it,” Strickland said. “And if there was ever a year when this would have come in handy, this would be the year.”

The Department of Revenue can, under special circumstances, grant a waiver, Strickland said. But this support tends to be given to governments that are late filing an audit report.

“When you’re five years noncompliant, I don’t think you’re gonna get a lot of tolerance out of the state,” he said.

Strickland said he suspects sorting out the city’s missing audits will be a lengthy process.

The Georgia Municipal Association brought in an outside firm from Thomaston to help with the process. Reshan Adams, a certified public accountant at the Drivers Adams and Sharpe firm, said communications began with the GMA, Edison’s mayor and former city clerk Tami Fincher at the end of June. The firm began its work in early July.

“We’re doing everything we can to get the documents and accounts in order to get the books ready to be audited,” Adams said.

Before retiring for health reasons, Fincher was able to send over bank statements and applicable documents, she said.

Adams said she believes sorting out the audits will take at least through the end of August. The firm is not expecting payment from Edison immediately. The city agreed on a proposal whereby it will pay for the firm’s time. As of Thursday, the city hadn’t been invoiced.

Another concern for Strickland is the potential of another storm ripping through the county and the city being ineligible for GEMA assistance.

In 2018, Hurricane Michael tore through southwest Georgia as a Category 2 and 3 storm. Calhoun was on a flash flood watch. The county received the highest rainfall total across the Florida panhandle and Big Bend, southwest Georgia, receiving 6.63 inches of rainfall, according to the National Weather Service.

“So we better pray that we don’t have a hurricane or tornado come through that area, because if they do, it might be very bad for the citizens,” Strickland said.

Increasing taxes leaves Ingram worried for small businesses who don’t have the same financial backing as some of the larger, more established businesses in Edison..

“If you are constantly raising property taxes, that’s going to put a strain on us,” Ingram said. “It’s inconsiderate for them to do that to get us out of a situation that we had no idea we were in to begin with.”

She said she’s already lowered her prices at her barbershop to accommodate the community.

“I already have to accommodate these people by sacrificing and charging less than what my value is,” Ingram said. “If I’m having to pay out more than I’m bringing in, that’s going to create a discord within me, my home and my business.”

Gerald Wilburn, a 51-year-old Edison resident, owns Dis N Dat Car Care. He’s one of two black mechanics in the city, he said. Like Ingram, he wanted his business to be rooted in his hometown to give back to his community.

But he says he’s worried about the increase in both property tax and fees for services like gas, garbage, sewer and water. Many of Edison’s residents are on a fixed income, Wilburn noted. He’s concerned, especially for Edison’s senior residents and their ability to make ends meet with an extreme increase in taxes.

“People will have to cut back spending here and there to make ends meet,” he said.

This could be detrimental to Edison’s businesses, which Wilburn said the city is already lacking in. He is calling for the mayor and council members to resign.

“They’ve been in office too long,” he said. “It’s time to start off fresh … so then maybe someone new will come in and find out what’s wrong.”

Ingram said she hopes to be a part of this fresh start. She plans to run in the upcoming election for a council position. She wants to see accountability from the mayor and current city council first, she said.

“That’s No. 1,” Ingram said. “No. 2 is they need to sit down and map out and do some actual budgeting.”

The council needs to figure out where expenses are going and how the city is going to come up with this revenue in a transparent way, she said.

“They need to understand that it’s not just about them, it’s about the city of Edison,” Ingram said. “It’s not about black, it’s not about white. It is about safety, protection, it’s citizens and growing and moving forward.”

File Photo: Lucille LanniganStaff Photo: Lucille Lannigan