Comment from Laura Ferguson Talega Residents for Fair Taxation

CUSD is the agency that receives and manages the Mello Roos portion of the property taxes that Talega homeowners and Talega commercial property owners pay above their ad valorem base tax rate that the County collects.

For years CUSDS abused the Mello-Roos by collecting far more than what was needed to service the bond debt and principal.

The Board must vote every August on the special tax rate and what to do with Talega's surplus taxes. Until Talega Residents for Fair Taxation, which I formed with a group of concerned homeowners remedied all of the special tax abuses at the hands of CUSD

CUSD had over-collected about $22M in surplus Mello Roos.

It would have been another $60M over the life our bond payments for CFD 90-2 and IA 2002-1 bonds from Talega homeowners and commercial property owners in Talega.

After we remedied the overtaxation and had 3 major taxpayer victories as volunteer advocates for fair and equitable taxation (no lawsuit) which took nearly one year, we then continued for another year to urge the CUSD school board to use the surplus taxes they over-collect to pay down our bond debt sooner since CUSD deemed that all facilities contemplated in our mitigation agreement (our contract) have been built thus already we have satisfied our contract for facilities (and then some).

CUSD decided to use the excess to cover debt service only and no longer keep it to use on unauthorized projects but what was really wonderful was that this same practice was applied districtwide across all 10 Community Facilities (Mello Roos) districts CUSD managed and derived special tax revenue from.

A big win for taxpayers who pay 2 times the tax of those living outside of a CFD.

There are 13 years left of the Mello Roos payments in Talega.