By Kenneth C. Rossignol
ST. MARY’S TODAY

LEONARDTOWN (March 17, 2009) --- The St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners are still hell bent to not only raise taxes on real estate owners once more in order to fund their purchase of fishy deals such as the Hayden Farm and the Beavan tract but to actually increase spending levels by county agencies by five percent and at the same time are considering a new $60 a month tax on business use of the drop off trash centers.

With the Republican Kenny Dement (Piney Point) joining them, the three Democrats on the Board, Dan Raley (Great Mills), Tommy Mattingly (Leonardtown) and Jackie Russell (St. George’s Island) have refused to support Commissioner Larry Jarboe’s (R. Golden Beach) motion in December to cut spending by five per cent in the coming fiscal year in order to maintain the tax levels where they are, known as the constant yield.

On Monday at their budget session, Jarboe again called for holding the line on taxes as county residents suffer from the near Depression sweeping the nation.

Last year in the preparation of the budget, Dement also failed to join his fellow Republican in calling for cutting county spending in order to avoid $14.5 million in tax hikes at the same time that property value have plummeted.

“There needs to be a reduction of almost six million dollars to hold the Constant Yield and reduce the property tax burden for St. Mary's County taxpayers,” Jarboe told ST. MARY’S TODAY. “This works out to a yearly average of $156.00 per property owner.”

When Jarboe was asked how he would find ways to cut the budget to maintain the constant yield and avoid a tax hike he said, “5.3 million dollars for the Hayden Farm and $750,000 dollars to bailout the Bevan tract developers are over six million in savings we could have applied toward our Capital Budget. I was the lone vote against both deals.”

While the state government has gone through several rounds of cuts, failing to cut social services or the bloated education spending, St. Mary’s County continues to live in an Alice in Wonderland world where the Mad Hatter is apparently in charge.

Jarboe remains the sole voice of sanity on the Board.

“If we only asked each agency for a 5% reduction as I was the lone commissioner to recommend (only a nickel on the dollar) we would easily have enough money to help our businesses and private sector working families survive. Most people in our County have taken far greater losses as our profits have plummeted and our investments have greatly diminished.

Commissioner Mattingly, when voting against Jarboe’s proposal last year to hold the line against tax hikes, made a statement at the Board budget meeting that the local economy was in good shape and there was no need to worry about a fiscal crisis. Commissioner Dan Raley said last year that the economy was in a dire slump but then inexplicitly turned around and voted with Mattingly, Dement and Russell against Jarboe’s motion to counter the effects of increased state assessments.

At Monday’s meeting, Raley asked Finance Director Elaine Kramer what a reduction in tax rate in order to meet the constant yield would mean to the average taxpayer. Kramer told him that the 38,000 property owners would see $156.00 not added to their present tax bills.

A large segment of the local population has suffered greatly in the nation’s most severe economic downturn, especially those that are associated with construction, real estate, contracting and the trades. Those businesses which were not directly connected to construction and real estate are still feeling the effects of the recession as consumers stop all spending but the most necessary.

Small business owners are going bankrupt at the twice the rate of the year before and are losing their homes, the vehicles and their life savings.

Some experienced observers of the local business scene predict that the next six months will see dozens of area businesses fail as they have used up their savings, maxed out their credit cards and the geniuses in Washington have blown millions on big banks while nothing, especially credit, trickles down to small businesses, just bloviating on the part of the politicians.

Mattingly, who has been collecting his commissioner’s pay along with his retirement as a telephone company lineman has little knowledge of the perils and pitfalls of running a business and his gross ignorance could be understood were he not making policy, buying land from his friends for the county and setting tax rates.

The foolishness of Raley, who for 30 years ran a small business with his family and knows full well the impact of higher taxes on struggling small businesses is shocking while Russell and Dement are simply lost balls in high grass on this and most other issues.

While many property owners have protested their increased assessments over the past year, most report receiving only minor adjustments to their property taxes.
State officials say that they do not set the local tax rates and the final say on tax bills are up to the county commissioners.

Commissioner Kenny Dement, showing that he has only an elementary school child’s grasp of the issue, maintains that he has not voted to raise taxes when the record clearly shows that he has done so in spite of campaign promises to vote a conservative course and to listen to people.

A small group of non-profit charities who annually beg funds from the taxpayers to support their functions appear to be the only ones who have also told Dement or the other commissioners that they want their taxes raised.

A continuing series of articles in ST. MARY’S TODAY on the cost of local government and the funding of these non-profit groups will reveal that substantial salaries are paid to the directors of these groups who generally show up at budget meetings to support the county dipping into the pockets of taxpayers to give money to these charities, instead of letting the individual citizens make the decision of whether to support these groups and their activities themselves.

When readers were asked in an online reader poll if they favored having their taxes raised apparently even liberal Democrats want to hang onto their money.
These are the results from the poll which is still running online:

Yes, we should continue to raise taxes in spite of the down economy 5% (117 votes)
No, taxes are high enough in this difficult time 95% (2013 votes)
Total Votes: 2130

At this week’s Monday budget session, Mattingly spoke in support of taxing businesses $60 a month for the use of the convenience centers. St. Mary’s County instituted a yearly property tax for use of the convenience centers and users of the landfill pay for each trip made to the dumping site on St. Andrews Church Road.

Jarboe said after the meeting that businesses don’t make trips to the convenience centers, from his experience, they, like him, pay for dumpsters and are paying for landfill operations already in their tax bills.

“Now, there is a proposal to make all businesses pay sixty bucks a month to use the convenience centers and transfer station,” said Jarboe. “That is twelve times the residential rate for small businesses that presently do not use the facility. Instead, we can sell a commercial sticker to those businesses who might want to use the County trash facility or they can continue to use their own contracted service as they are doing today.”

“We cannot afford to tax our families and businesses in such an extreme manner,” said Jarboe.