Gilmer County is in serious financial trouble, and if we don’t act fast, it’s about to get a lot worse.
Over the last 8 years, Gilmer County has racked up more than $57 MILLION in debt.

We are absolutely buried in debt, and we don’t like it.
How could a small, rural county like Gilmer get itself into such a huge financial mess?
The harsh reality is that county politicians and unwitting taxpayers have been piling on this debt for years.
*** Over $26 MILLION in bonds were issued by the Gilmer County Building Authority from 2005 to 2008.
*** An additional $30 MILLION in bonds were pushed by the Gilmer County Commissioners in 2007.
And where did this taxpayer-backed debt get spent?
*** $386 THOUSAND were spent on a “judges’ parking lot”.
*** $50 THOUSAND were spent to repair damages to the courthouse sustained during a furniture move.
*** $1.5 MILLION were spent to build hangars at the Gilmer County airport that have never been used.
This debt is the number one challenge facing Gilmer County today, and the Board of Commissioners has done nothing to reduce the real root of the problem: spending.

Instead of attacking the root of the problem by cutting spending and applying the savings to the debt, Commissioners J.C. Sanford and Danny Hall would have us believe that our only choices are to either raise sales taxes (via a SPLOST) or to raise property taxes.

In fact, this isn’t the first tax hike J.C. Sanford has championed. In 2011, J.C. Sanford voted to tax an additional $1.5 MILLION dollars from Gilmer property owners instead of cutting wasteful spending!
The current SPLOST will expire next year, and we will soon be asked to approve another 6-year SPLOST. As before, we are told that we must do this in order to be able to pay Gilmer County’s bond debt.
But not only are Commissioners J.C. Sanford and Danny Hall refusing to consider spending cuts to help pay for the debt, they are also refusing to guarantee that the SPLOST, if passed by voters, would be used to pay the debt! These Commissioners want more of your tax money with no strings attached and no accountability to the voters!

To add insult to injury, sources at the Commissioners’ Office have reported that J.C. Sanford and Danny Hall have stated that: “They [the Gilmer County citizens] are not going to tell us what to do!”
News flash, Commissioners: We the People are your bosses. That is our job, and YOU work for US.
Do you trust these politicians to spend our SPLOST funds “…in the order of priority and in such amounts as determined within the reasonable discretion of the Board of Commissioners…”?

That’s the current wording of the proposed SPLOST resolution.

Giving the Board of Commissioners what amounts to a blank check isn’t going to get rid of the county’s debt. All you’re going to get is more of the same.

Time is short. The language of the SPLOST resolution will be voted on as soon as July 11th.
Once the SPLOST wording has been approved by the Commissioners, it will be too late to change it.

We should be insisting that they reduce spending and pay for the things they’ve already bought with your money! Demand that they write the ballot language to restrict the SPLOST money to paying off current debts!