Discussions on tax increase proposal continue, Councilman speaks out

JACKSON, Tenn. — There has been more discussion regarding the proposed tax increases for the City of Jackson.

The decision has not been made yet regarding if there will be tax increases. We reached out to each council member for the City and were able to sit down with Councilman J.P. Stovall, who represents District 1. He spoke about the situation that the City is in regarding the budget.

“You either cut, or you do what nobody wants to do, and that is raise taxes,” Stovall said.

Mayor Scott Conger, who is proposing the tax raises, spoke in a recent Facebook livestream about cutting expenses.

“When we’re talking about cutting spending, there’s no smoking gun. We’re not the federal government. We can’t print money. We can’t just go in and continue to add to the deficit,” Mayor Conger stated. “We’re talking about cutting services when we’re talking about cutting spending. When we’re cutting spending, we’re cutting services to the citizens.”

Councilman Stovall said that this topic is not a new one for this year. It is something he saw in the past.

“We’re coming up three million short every year or having to dip into the emergency fund,” Stovall said. “I said a year ago that, if we pass this budget now, we’re going to be right back here next year and we’re probably going to have to raise taxes. Which is something that I didn’t want to do then and I still don’t want to do.”

Many people have expressed that their property taxes have already gone up recently. This was due to a property value assessment. In his livestream, Mayor Conger addressed this.

“Residential property saw an increase and commercial property saw a decrease in their tax payment. The tax rate dropped from $1.9661 to $1.6114. So while we see on personal individual property tax bills went up a little bit, the City did not see any benefit from that,” said Conger.

Mayor Conger said that the State gave the certified rate so that the City could not take in anymore money than the year before.

We also got responses from Council members Julie Holt, Candice Busby, and Richard Donnell. However, they were not available for an interview.

We have not received a response from the other council members.

For more local news, click here.