If you are wondering why your Hall County property taxes continue to spiral upward, read The Times, April 26, 2023 article titled “Hall’s public information officer receives promotion, pay BUMP”, you should have some idea of how your Hall County tax dollars are being spent and why they need more, more, more.

An employee who was hired last September, 7 months ago, was given a salary increase from $76,000 to $114,000 and it is called a “BUMP”. Additionally, a $450 monthly car allowance and a $50 cell phone allowance were part of the “BUMP” – for a county government employee who is in a position that was created last summer and has been on the job 7 months.

That must be one good PIO.

Compare this to the tax dollars spent by Hall County to continue fighting the county employees who lost their retirement plan some years back. Once again, it becomes obvious that our property taxes will continue to rise with no end in sight.

We are given the “right” to protest our property tax evaluation, but that is a joke. I’ve protested several times in the last five or six years, and while the evaluation was lessened on a couple of occasions, it was raised enough the next year to make up for the lessened evaluation and then some.

There appears to be no control over government spending of our tax dollars. Think of this when the next SPLOST or TSPLOST campaign kicks off. Money is being wasted or spent foolishly on many things which don’t necessarily improve the quality of life for the majority of us. We just get/got another “BUMP”.

Johnny Gilbert

Gainesville