It is time to hold elected officials to account in Spalding County, Griffin and the County School Board.
Spending is out of control
Property Taxes at all time high
Budgets for City, County, and school at an all-time high
Wasteful Spending
Not living within their budgets, having deficits and debt
Hundreds of millions in Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax
Very little if any offset for property taxes
Elected officials failing to listen to their constituents
Just to name a few.
The people are tired of footing the bill for a government that fails to restrain themselves monetarily and cut spending.
It is our duty as citizens of this country, state, city, county, to hold elected and unelected officials and bureaucracy to account.
We need to start recalling elected officials that fail to do the will of the people. And vote out any in held seats that fails to do the will of the people, regardless of party line.
We need citizens to step up and run for office, and we need constituents to stop voting along party lines.
This is a Constitutional Republic, for the people by the people, the people we give power to answer to us, not the other way around.
If the party in power, that has a majority, fails to listen to and honor we the people, aka the constituency voices, when voicing our concerns and objection to issues, it is our duty to hold them to account. It is not about Republican or Democrat!
We The People, are tired of living within our means and supporting a government who fails to live within theirs.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
First: use this link REPORT FORM , to report any issues you think need to be addressed; it is anonymous.
Start educating yourself on the spending, programs, budgets, tax revenue, local ordinances and state laws, as well as federal laws.
Attend meetings and ask hard questions.
Send emails with concerns about spending, debt, taxes, etc.
School Board: https://www.gscs.org/o/gscss/page/meet-the-board-members
Complete Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests also known as Open Records Requests (ORR),
School Board: https://www.gscs.org/o/gscss/page/contact-us
It is our country, state, county, they just happened to be on our payroll!!
Make your voices heard, silence=complicity
________________________________________________________________
History Lesson:
"No Taxation Without Representation"
In 1764, the British Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which revised a 1733 tax on molasses being imported to the North American colonies from the West Indies. It improved the enforcement of this tax and explicitly stated that the reason was to raise revenue, a first of its kind. American colonists, especially in New England, responded furiously to this new tax.
Samuel Adams said in response to the Sugar Act: “If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without ever having a legal representative where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?”
While the colonists likened their situation to slaves of the British Empire, American colonists paid very little in taxes compared with their counterparts in Great Britain. In Great Britain, a person paid about 26 shillings a year in taxes, while in America, they still paid only 1 shilling a year in taxes. Despite this, the American colonists strongly opposed the tax and the lack of any power to influence the decisions of Parliament.
The following year, in 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which levied a tax on many paper goods (such as newspapers, pamphlets, and legal documents) within the colonies. American colonists met the Stamp Act with protests and outrage. Protests included violence against tax collectors, the formation of the Sons of Liberty, and the creation of numerous “Liberty Trees” where gatherings and demonstrations against British overreach were displayed. In October 1765, delegates from nine different colonies gathered in New York at the Stamp Act Congress. They passed a Declaration of Rights and Grievances in which they asserted in part “that it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted rights of Englishmen, that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.”
The Stamp Act became so unpopular that in 1766 Parliament repealed the act. However, they also passed a Declaratory Act that directly contradicted the colonists view on the authority to levy taxes. The Declaratory Act noted that Parliament “had hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”
In 1768, the catchphrase of “No taxation without representation” first appeared in a London newspaper. As debate continued throughout the 1760s and 1770s over whether the Crown had the right to tax the colonial subjects, the phrase grew more and more popular. It provided an ideological argument in a short and powerful way against many of the subsequent taxes, such as the Townshend Acts in 1767 and 1768 and the Tea Act in 1773. As the colonies grew more and more rebellious to these taxes, the Crown pushed back stronger and only further drove the two parties towards organized conflict. Conflict finally ignited in 1775, and by the following year, the colonies united and declared their independence from Great Britain.
In 1778, Parliament finally passed the Taxation of Colonies Act which repealed the taxes, but by that point it was too late. What had begun as an argument over the ability and right to levy taxes had expanded into a conflict over the right of self-determination and freedom.
Today, the phrase “No taxation without representation” continues to be used by people who want to have a say in how they are taxed. It remains a powerful phrase that provokes people to think about the consent of the governed.