There's an old saw that says history repeats itself, and I reckon one of the dangers of living in a community more than a half century is that, every now and then, one hears things and gets the feeling: "haven't I heard that before?"
For instance, a little more than a decade ago there was a good bit of conversation about how much our taxes might be lowered if we merged city and county. At that time when you said "city" it meant Gainesville, but other cities were included in the merger conversations, too. So ... somebody put it on a ballot for a non-binding referendum, and to many people's surprise a large majority of city and county voters said, in effect: "Good idea. Let's do a study on how to do this, and get it going." There was some bickering about who should appoint how many study committee members, but when they got into the study it didn't look nearly as good as that one paragraph statement on the ballot. As it ended up, we did merge some services, but we did not merge city and county, even though there is a vote on record to go forward.
The reason this comes to mind, of course, is because I keep hearing folks say: "We have voted in favor of impact fees. Let's get it going." And then somebody else says: "maybe we'd better look at the details first." And somebody else gives you an example of where it has worked wonders, and right across the street another person tells you about another place where it was a disaster. Then somebody says: "Wait a minute. I didn't know impact fees might make some other taxes go up." And still another person says: "If we do this, Jackson County and Buford are going to get all our new industry, as well as all of our taxes." And I keep thinking: "Haven't I heard this discussion before?"
This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.
Monday
August 4th, 2025
6:04AM
