During the most recent budget discussion, Tullahomans were asked for “ideas” to add money to the city’s bank account. To keep things simple, I’m using $1,500 per dwelling per year in property taxes that would have been in the pipeline or already built if this board didn’t sell out to the neighborhood activists from the east side with the tacky green-and-yellow signs. The Anderson Farms neighborhood had planned at least 300 houses that would have started to populate our city’s revenue with new money. That’s $450,000 per year, forever, that should be in our budget and is now gone, cancelled directly by those sitting on this board when they killed this property owner’s dreams for our community.
Two other major real estate projects were also cancelled by the developers themselves once the Anderson Farms owners were shut down. They would have created more than 500 additional homes near the airport by Walmart and between Brookfield and Blantonwood. That’s another $750,000 in annual income that our city government would have been able to spend on SROs, roads, schools, fire, police, etc. that is now lost as a direct result of the current leaders of our community and their anti-development friends.
We’re coming off a few years of a massive economic boom across the country, and Tullahoma is now looking to tighten its belt by polling the community for revenue? In the last six months alone, there has been $1.2 million in property tax receipts thrown into the trash bin to protect two neighborhoods from having a little bit more traffic. We’re now expecting a crisis in the budget next year, and it’s easy to see who we have to thank for that.
Remember this next year when our BMA starts talking about what nonprofits to cut, which projects to put on hold, or whether to borrow more money to pay for simple things like payroll and asphalt. The shells are about to start sliding around the table until we’re all confused about how we got here in the first place and where to place the blame.
So, here’s an idea for how to generate cash for our community: learn how to govern and stop pandering to the activists in our midst.
***published as an op-ed in the Tullahoma News on July 2, 2023