Second judge named for Whitfield mediation
For the second time in a month, representatives of the city of Dalton, Georgia, the Whitfield County Commission and three other municipalities will sit down with a judge for a mandatory meeting to negotiate the county’s service delivery strategy.
The strategy is a state-mandated agreement that lays out how local governments pay for shared services such as public health services, sewer service, fire service, public housing, law enforcement, road work and dozens more.
After eight hours of mediation on Oct. 17, the city of Dalton and Whitfield County hit a wall and couldn’t find common ground on an agreement over government services before the Oct. 31 deadline. The county’s three other municipalities — Tunnel Hill, Varnell and Cohutta — have sided with Whitfield County and would sign the agreement as it stands now.
Without an agreed-upon strategy, the county could lose its qualified local government status — a state designation that ensures that municipalities don’t duplicate services — and potentially miss out on millions in state and federal grant funds.
The first meeting was mediated by former Georgia Supreme Court Justice Norman Fletcher. The next will be mediated by Ralph Van Pelt Jr. of the Lookout Valley Judicial Circuit, who was chosen after a hearing presided over by Chief Judge David Emerson of the 7th Judicial Administrative District.
The two sides missed the Oct. 31 deadline to come up with an agreement. The Georgia Department of Community Affairs implemented the service delivery strategy agreement in 1999 to make sure the state’s municipalities were not duplicating services and wasting taxpayer money.
The state says that if the agreement isn’t made every 10 years, the local municipalities will not be recognized as government entities and won’t be eligible for millions of dollars in state and federal funds.
Whitfield County, Dalton and the three smaller municipalities wouldn’t be able to issue permits or collect state funds for road construction. They could be penalized in other ways if an agreement isn’t made, but Georgia law also allows for those penalties to be
put off during a mandatory mediation over a service delivery agreement.
The joint motion submitted Friday to the Whitfield County Superior Court would give Whitfield County and the city of Dalton until May 2020 to resolve the issue and come up with an agreement.
The last time the agreement in Whitfield County was negotiated was 2013. The city of Dalton has been hesitant about signing off on the same deal that was made in 2013 because it believes city residents have paid $4 million in taxes that should have been paid by Whitfield County residents.
Now Dalton wants — among other things — 10% more in the county’s local option sales tax (LOST) distribution to help make up for that inequity.
Whitfield County officials have said they will not budge on giving the city more of the county’s share of that tax collection, because the commission believes it gave up too much LOST revenue when that distribution was last negotiated in 2012.
Right now, Whitfield County receives 61.5% of the county’s LOST and Dalton gets 35%. If Dalton were to get another 10%, that would shift about $1.7 million from the county’s pocketbook to city coffers.
The local option sales tax is a 1% sales tax, usually a special district tax, voted on by citizens and imposed on purchases and sales in a county. Then an agreement is reached on how much of the 1% a county will split with its municipalities.
The city also is trying to reclaim some tax dollars by saying that it shouldn’t have to pay for the construction of county roads because city residents don’t directly benefit from those roads.
The county has pushed back hard on that point, saying all county residents clearly take advantage of every road in the county regardless of where they live.
Dalton Mayor Dennis Mock — who lost his re-election bid by 11 votes last week — said in a new release that he and the city representatives are looking forward to coming up with an agreement that is fair to city and county residents.
“We’re pleased that Judge Van Pelt has been appointed and we’re looking forward to working together to bring this negotiation to a resolution,” Mock said.
A date for the mediation has not been scheduled.