{"id":13920,"date":"2015-08-10T08:45:32","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T12:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=13920"},"modified":"2015-08-10T09:22:42","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T13:22:42","slug":"land-is-not-just-money-appeal-tax-valuations-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/land-is-not-just-money-appeal-tax-valuations-today.html","title":{"rendered":"Land is not just money: appeal tax valuations today"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nAppeal today<\/a> if you think there’s more to land (or business)\r\nand woods and fields and streams than money,\r\nunlike the Tax Assessors, whose revaluation would drive development\r\ninto agricultural areas of the county where it doesn’t belong,\r\nwhile avoiding populated areas such as the south side of Valdosta.\r\nWe can expect pipeline companies and utilities from other states\r\nto think nothing of pillaging our lands for their profit.\r\nWe shouldn’t expect that of our neighbors whom we elected Tax Asssessors.\r\nIf you have affection for your land, your county, your neighborhood,\r\ntoday’s the deadline\r\n\r\nto appeal your valuation<\/a>.\r\nAnd there will be an election later.\r\n

\r\nAs Wendell Berry said,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhatever has happened in what economists call “the\r\neconomy,” it is generally true that the land economy has been\r\ndiscounted or ignored.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAre the Tax Assessors boomers?\r\nAre you a sticker?\r\nWendell Berry explains:\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nBoomers, he said, are “those who pillage and run,” who\r\nwant “to make a killing and end up on Easy Street,”\r\nwhereas stickers are “those who settle, and love the life they\r\nhave made and the place they have made it\r\nin.”2<\/sup><\/small>\r\n

\r\n“Boomer” names a\r\nkind of person and a kind of ambition that is the major theme, so\r\nfar, of the history of the European races in our country.\r\n“Sticker” names a kind of person and also a desire that\r\nis, so far, a minor theme of that history, but a theme persistent\r\nenough to remain significant and to offer, still, a significant\r\nhope.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThis was in his\r\n2012 Jefferson Lecture,\r\n“IT ALL TURNS ON AFFECTION”<\/a>\r\nand\r\nvideo (he speaks starting at 11 minutes<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nWho caused Berry to care about the land he has conserved all his life?\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"300x168<\/a>\r\nThe economic hardship of my family and of many others, a century\r\nago, was caused by a monopoly, the American Tobacco Company, which\r\nhad eliminated all competitors and thus was able to reduce as it\r\npleased the prices it paid to farmers. The American Tobacco Company\r\nwas the work of James B. Duke of Durham, North Carolina, and New\r\nYork City, who, disregarding any other consideration, followed a\r\ncapitalist logic to absolute control of his industry and,\r\nincidentally, of the economic fate of thousands of families such as\r\nmy own.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe same James B. Duke\r\n\r\nfounded Duke Energy Company<\/a>,\r\nwhich recently\r\n\r\nbought a 7.5% stake in the proposed Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline<\/a>\r\nafter already being advertised by the original owners, Spectra Energy of Houston, Texas, and NextEra Energy of Juno Beach, Florida, as\r\none of the main supposed customers in Florida<\/a>\r\nof that pipeline.\r\n

\r\n\r\nIt’s not surprising that a utility from North Carolina\r\nwould join a pipeline company from Texas and a utility from Florida\r\nin trying to gouge through our lands in Georgia.\r\n\r\nYou can still help fight that, by\r\n\r\ncalling Governor Deal<\/a>, commenting to FERC and GA-EDP, and \r\n\r\n\"300x369<\/a>\r\nhelping WWALS oppose\r\nFL-DEP’s proposed permit for Sabal Trail.\r\nOr come to\r\n\r\ntomorrow evening’s County Commission Regular Session<\/a>\r\nand ask your local elected officials to ask Gov. Deal and to do more themselves.\r\n

\r\nWendell Berry warned about exactly what the Tax Assessors did in favoring Bill Gates’ recent corporate agricultural land purchases:\r\n

\r\n

<\/a>\r\nIt is necessary to append to this argument the further fact that by now, owing largely to corporate influence, land ownership implies the right to destroy the land-community entirely, as in surface mining, and to impose, as a consequence, the dangers of flooding, water pollution, and disease upon communities downstream.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt should be surprising that our own elected Tax Assessors\r\nact just like greedy boomers, with this revaluation that takes no account of the land communities, and thereby also threatens everybody downstream, such as Valdosta with its already-chronic flooding problems.\r\n

\r\nTo think I voted for those Tax Commisisoners, and you probably did, too.\r\nAt the\r\nFarm Bureau meeting about rural land revaluation<\/a>,\r\nTax Assessors Mike Hill repeatedly said he might be a one-term Assessor.\r\nMaybe we should grant his wish for those who voted for that arbitrary\r\nrevaluation that favors Bill Gates over local landowners,\r\nand city developers over farms, fields, and streams.\r\n

\r\nAre you just a negligible detail?\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nJames B. Duke came from a rural family in the tobacco country of\r\nNorth Carolina. In his early life he would have known men such as my\r\ngrandfather. But after he began his rise as an industrialist, the\r\nlife of a small tobacco grower would have been to him a negligible\r\ndetail incidental to an opportunity for large profits. In the minds\r\nof the “captains of industry,” then and now, the people\r\nof the land economies have been reduced to statistical numerals.\r\nPower deals “efficiently” with quantities that affection\r\ncannot recognize.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n“But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid” —Micah 4:4\r\n

\r\nIf you consider your land more than negligible,\r\nthe Chamber has provided a handy list of\r\n\r\nhow to appeal your valuation<\/a>.\r\nToday’s the deadline.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Appeal today if you think there’s more to land (or business) and woods and fields and streams than money, unlike the Tax Assessors, whose revaluation would drive development into agricultural areas of the county where it doesn’t belong, while avoiding populated areas such as the south side of Valdosta. We can expect pipeline companies and […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[202,14,740,20,6687,55],"tags":[8750,8624,8626,300,143,8704,4093,8630,8801,8701,3391,8633,8702,1622,8710,4991,12,7,8628,805,8635,8634,7134,8625,6076,1879,8631,8586,8629,42,6597,7857,6966,8627,7875,4049,6,8727,1871,8632],"class_list":["post-13920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-economy","category-forestry","category-law","category-pipeline-2","category-water","tag-agriculture","tag-american-tobacco-company","tag-care","tag-development","tag-duke-energy","tag-economy","tag-farm","tag-forbearance","tag-forestry","tag-georgia","tag-greed","tag-james-b-duke","tag-lake","tag-land","tag-law","tag-love","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mercy","tag-money","tag-national-endowment-for-the-humanities","tag-neh","tag-nextera-energy","tag-pillage","tag-pipeline","tag-power","tag-respect","tag-revaluation","tag-reverence","tag-rural","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-silviculture","tag-spectra-energy","tag-sympathy","tag-tax-assessors","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wendell-berry","tag-worth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3Cw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13920"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13932,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13920\/revisions\/13932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}