DARIEN, Ga. (AP) -- Residents of one of the few remaining Gullah-Geechee communities on the Southeast coast opened new appeals Monday against soaring property values that brought them big tax hikes, fearful they could be forced off lands their families have owned since their ancestors were freed from slavery.The African-American residents of the tiny Hog Hammock community on Georgia's Sapelo Island got sticker shock last year when steep increases in their property values saddled them with whopping tax bills.
Skyrocketing appraisals and tax bills come amid pressure from affluent mainland buyers driving up land values while seeking property along or near the Atlantic coast. But critics say the increasing tax burden violates protections enacted to help preserve the island's indigenous inhabitants.
the greed of the ones who have the money is played out on those who don't, they take advantage of their money that buys them the yes sir's from others.
law doesn't matter when rich Whites want what you have and what you have is isolated not so much in the mainstream. their forefathers brought them here and now they want to slap them again and put them out of their homes, that is done across the country, public housing being torn down to make room for middle class homes, those people are forced to move to MD or Va. and warehoused all over again.
Made up of slave descendants long isolated from the U.S. mainland, the Gullah-Geechee culture has clung to its African roots and traditions more than any other in America. Hog Hammock — with fewer than 50 residents — is one of the last such communities from North Carolina to Florida.Julius and Cornelia Bailey saw the appraised value of the single acre on which they have a home, a convenience store and a small inn shoot from $220,285 in 2011 to $327,063 last year. Appraisers in Georgia's McIntosh County held firm on the new value after being ordered to take a second look in January by local authorities.The Baileys and more than 40 of their neighbors appealed anew Monday after seeing little relief from the new appraisals.Cornelia Bailey said her tax bill shot from about $800 to $3,000, though she and other island residents receive virtually no county services. They have no schools, no trash pickup, no police station and only one paved road."So what are we paying taxes for?" Bailey said after the board shot down her appeal and at least nine others Monday. "We're just paying for privilege of living on Sapelo Island. We don't want to be crybabies, but it seems like we're being treated unfairly."
places like this should be made historical sites not subject to intrusion by the rich, hell they have sanctuary's that protect birds and insects but indigenous peoples that are of African decent don't qualify, greatest country in the world or is it?
if anyone should carry the banner of taxation without representation and i thought DC my home was the head of that line, i stand corrected.
