From former AHA Board Member Julian Bene;
​Next Wednesday, August 7, Fulton commissioners are staging a required listening session about this year's property tax hike.
 
This is our chance to tell them to their faces what we think about them allowing trophy commercial properties to be appraised at an average of 55% of their sale value, while our homes are appraised at around 100%.  As you know, Commissioners are willfully letting enormously profitable behemoths like INVESCO, BlackRock and Google get away with huge underpayment of property tax – hundreds of millions across the county. This leaves ordinary Atlanta households to pick up the tab.
 
Commissioners have known about the trophy property tax scandal for at least six years – when we got the AJC and Channel 11 to run stories on it.  They’ve known since 2021 that their development authority has a big conflict of interest when it gives out unnecessary tax breaks to every project that comes along. The breaks add to the underpayment of property tax by the highest value properties in town and consequently adds to the tax burden for families. The Commission has done nothing to fix either of these scandals. They play us for fools.
 
Commissioners may not know how much this galls us.  Though Mo Ivory’s defeat of Natalie Hall sent a signal.  Next Wednesday is a chance to inform them.  Please add your voices in person or via Zoom.  
 
Let me know if you’d like a copy of a slide deck that gives examples of mammoth trophy under-valuations and outlines how a serious Commission would fix the scandal.
 
All concerned citizens are invited to the public hearing on this tax increase to be held in the Government Center Assembly Hall, 141 Pryor Street, Atlanta, GA 30303 on August 7, 2024 at 10:00 a.m., and via video conferencing via Zoom address: 

https://zoom.us/j/96836327417?pwd=cVd5MG1ONEVsL2FjYXJBZEhUSUJvZz09 

Best, Julian
​[email protected]
404.317.9320