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Property tax overhaul poses challenge for counties
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ATLANTA— A state law aimed at helping taxpayers is causing more of them to appeal their property tax bills to county officials, who say the extra workload in some cases is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For example, Fulton County officials say changing the law has caused property tax appeals to more than double from a then-record 15,000 appeals for the 2010 tax year to 31,000 for 2011. As a result, the county Board of Equalization is seeking an extra $250,000 to $450,000 in funding for expenses through December, said Melvin Richardson, the Fulton County board’s office director.

“With increased work comes increased costs, and we have experienced that in Fulton,” Richardson said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that appeals also are growing in other Georgia counties since the new state property tax law took effect last year. The law not only moved boards of equalization — three-member citizen panels appointed to hear property tax appeals — from tax assessors’ officers to Superior Court clerks, but it also required counties for the first time to send all property owners an assessment notice with an estimate of their tax bills.

Many counties that hadn’t previously mailed such notices saw an increase in appeals from property owners after the first batch was sent. More appeals meant a larger workload, and increased expenses, for the panels that hear those appeals.

“It’s the counties that never did it or only sent them out on a five- or 10-year basis that are getting slammed,” said Cherokee Superior Court Clerk Patty Baker. Her county had already been sending annual notices to property owners.

In Cobb County, the Superior Court clerk has asked for $30,000 extra to cover the cost of hearing appeals through the end of the fiscal year in September. DeKalb County court clerk Debra DeBerry said she also had to ask for more funding this year for her board, which gets $442,000 overall, but didn’t get her full request.

John Sherman, president of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, said the extra appeals there were caused by assessments that failed to reflect a decline in home values.

“When assessments are too high, taxpayers naturally appeal, and I do believe the boards of equalization are working overtime today,” Sherman said.

State Sen. Chip Rogers, a Republican from Woodstock, sponsored the law that was passed in 2010. He agreed inflated property assessments are to blame for the rise in appeals by homeowners.

“The fact is if the assessments were correct there wouldn’t be so many appeals,” Rogers said. “When we see local governments having to expend additional resources to handle the appeals, it just highlights the need to scrap this system.”

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Book review: Author digs into mining's complicated past and present in 'River of Lost Souls'
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Jonathan Thompson will speak about his book "River of Lost Souls" at the King's English Bookshop on Tuesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. - photo by Amanda Olson
"RIVER OF LOST SOULS: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Spill," by Jonathan Thompson, Torrey House Press, 275 pages (nf)

Plenty has been written about the very small world of a mining town and the very broad reach of a beleaguered industry. From Loretta Lynns iconic song "Coal Miners Daughter," to the 2010 nail-biting coverage of 33 trapped Chilean miners, to the hit Broadway musicals "Paint Your Wagon" and "Billy Elliot," mining is a global story, and its one of heartbreak, hard work and hard times.

Jonathan Thompsons "River of Lost Souls" examines the many facets of risk involved in taking resources from below the earths surface. An environmental journalist, Thompson has reported on southwest Colorado for over 20 years. This book is special, however, because the Four Corners area of Colorado is his current and ancestral home. Thompson is writing about minings ecological, social, financial and political impact on his land, his landscape, his water, his people. That makes "River of Lost Souls" more than a regular reporting job.

Thompson begins with the Gold King Mine wastewater disaster of 2015, which the EPA caused while attempting to drain water near the mines entrance. The spill sent 3 million gallons of waste and tailings into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River and part of the San Juan River watershed which drains into the Colorado, affecting the Utah, Colorado and New Mexico parts of that watershed as well as the Navajo Nation.

From there, Thompson jumps into far stretches of time to 1765, when a Spanish explorer named the Animas River; to 10,000 years earlier, when Paleo-Indians roamed the rivers valley; to the meridian of time, when the ancestors of the Zuni, Hopi and Rio Grande Pueblo people inhabited the land for 500 years; to the mid-1800s and the Swedes who came to Silverton, Colorado, to mine.

Its a grand scope, but telling any story of landscape is telling a very grand story.

It also makes a complex story difficult to follow. Thompsons time warps are important, but they are jarring. His time jumps need clear dates, and Thompson doesnt always make them available. A map would also be useful. Thompsons writing is good, but his sentences can be dense and require readers to do their own mining for the riches the writing embeds. The work is worthwhile, however, as there are many moving parts in any story about mines land, culture, policy, history, money, inevitable disaster and Thompson works to examine all of them.

"River of Lost Souls" is a thoughtful read, but not a quick one. Because Thompsons writings come from 20 years of his newspaper reports, the overall feeling can be disjointed and sparse, which is distracting if one is expecting to follow a tenable thread. This is not a typical narrative with a cast of characters and a traditional story arc. Readers should approach this text as the investigation it is: puzzle pieces of a larger-than-life story that is eons old. If you are the kind of reader who wants it laid out cleanly, this is not that book. But, to Thompsons point, nothing is clean about mining that has never been the case.

Thompsons best writing is in his descriptions of people and places. His telling of how he came to Silverton is familiar and engaging. If readers approach the book with care and attention, they will be rewarded with savoring these descriptive passages when they happen.
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