Hey Brownie,

What’s the scoop on the new street lights in town? Looks like they were all replaced — what was wrong with the old ones? Who paid the bill (I guess “we the people” always do), but what government unit paid — and how much did it cost?

It looks like Braun has a plan to reduce property taxes and I just heard that State Rep. J.D. Prescott from up north has a proposal to eliminate all property tax and replace it with a sales tax. If that happens, what will it do to projects like the street lights?

A Fed Up Taxpayer

Dear Fed Up,

Just when I was settling in for a good long nap before football season gets going … you come along. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you come into mine with a question.

(Sorry, wrong movie.)

Anyways, this private eye jumped on the case lickety-split and came up with a couple of answers for you.

First, when it comes to the street lights, we went to Town Manager Sandie Jones and asked:

Why were the streetlights replaced?

What did that cost?

Who paid it?

Here’s what Sandie told us.

“The new stop lights in town were designed and paid for by INDOT. They are doing signal modernizations throughout the state on rolling intervals.

The INDOT project modernized the current traditional intersection at Main and Van Buren into an exclusive pedestrian phase intersection. An exclusive pedestrian phase intersection is a type of traffic signal movement that temporarily stops all vehicular traffic, allowing pedestrians to cross an intersection in any direction, at the same time. Exclusive pedestrian phase intersections are installed to ensure that people crossing the street are able to do so without any vehicle movement through the intersection. Pedestrians must push the walk button in order to start the walk cycle and wait until instructed to cross the street safely. If done correctly, vehicles will not have to wait to turn for pedestrians as they should only be crossing when all traffic is stopped.”

Then, we went to Town Board President Andi Wilson and County Council President Gary Huett and asked them:

If property taxes are reduced or eliminated by the state and replaced with some sort of sales tax system, how will that affect the town and the county? (By the way, we did not ask the county commissioners because as you know, the finances of the county are controlled by the council, not the commissioners.)

Here’s what they told us.

Gary Huett said, “That’s a great question. We would have to restructure our local intake and distribution of taxes to be able to continue funding the county budget. The state would likely have to enact new laws to allow us to do that, depending on how they restructured it.”

Andi Wilson sent us to Nashville Clerk-Treasurer Brenda Young and Brenda said, “We would have to do more research until I can actually see the actual plan, to look at it and then have a better idea of what is being proposed. But definitely, if property taxes are reduced or eliminated, it would affect local government.”

Thanks again Fed Up! I appreciate the chance to dust off the rust and get busy again. I’ve got to do something besides target practice off the back end of my ‘45 DeSota two-door coupe.

If anyone else has a question to keep me busy, just name it Attention Brownie and email it to [email protected].

See you in the funny papers!