Ringgold: Refuse Sewer? Get the Shaft.

This is what a good ol’ fashioned government shakedown looks like.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. What more people are starting to realize is that governments are the mother of extortion. Don’t think so? Let’s take a moment to honor the sheer genius of local government.

Not the pothole-filling, good governance kind. No, I mean the bold, visionary kind—the kind that dreams up brand-new ways to charge you for things. Even things you didn’t do.

Enter, the non-user fee.

It’s a real thing. A real fee. For real people. Who really didn’t use anything.

You see, in the scenic North Georgia city of Ringgold, someone had a brilliant idea years ago. The city extended sewer lines to neighborhoods where many folks were already happily using their own septic systems. So far, so good.

But then came a problem: some people didn’t connect. They declined the offer. Refused the generous opportunity to dig up their yard, pay thousands of dollars, and enjoy monthly sewer bills forever.

Ingrates and monsters they are, really.

So the city did what any reasonable group of elected men and women clothed in the immense statist power of a governing body would do:

They sent the freeloaders not using the sewer a bill anyway.

Not for service. Not for connection. Not even for maintenance. Just for having the opportunity to use the service. A proximity tax. A fine for saying, “No thanks.”

This wasn’t just a bad policy. This was government breaking into new territory—an exciting frontier where not using something is now billable. You didn’t use the sewer? You still owe. Because you could have.

The genius is undeniable, traditional business models foolishly depend on customer satisfaction and actual service delivery. Local governments like Ringgold have discovered they could skip those tedious steps entirely. Money for nothing!

Imagine the possibilities.

Didn’t use the public tennis courts? That’s a no-serve access surcharge. Skipped the town Christmas parade? Shame, that’ll be $1.99 still, it was great! Didn’t park downtown this month? Too bad. You had access. That’s a non-parking availability fee.

This is where local government becomes less about essential service delivery and more about revenue extraction and theft. The non-user fee abandons the quaint notion that payment should correlate with service received. Why should citizens only pay for what they get when they could pay for what they don't get instead? Once the logic shifts from “pay for what you use” to “pay because it exists,” there’s no limit to how many little charges they can invent.

But recently something rare happened: someone with a gavel said, “Hold on.”

At the August 5th Catoosa County Commission meeting, Chairman Steven Henry made a motion to put an end to this nonsense—at least where county SPLOST dollars (sales tax revenue) are concerned. He proposed a requirement: if Ringgold wants county help funding a sewer rejuvenation/repair project, it needs to meet two conditions:

1. Eliminate the non-user fee, and

2. Implement a uniform rate structure for everyone using the system.

That motion came alongside pointed questions and discussion led by District 3 Commissioner Richard Tharpe, who called out the absurdity of charging people for not connecting to a service they didn’t want and didn’t use.

They nailed it. Because this fee isn’t just ridiculous and obnoxious…it is quite simply an illegal tax.

In Georgia, local governments aren’t allowed to impose taxes by stealth. If you want to raise revenue, you have to do it out in the open: a uniform tax, passed through the proper processes. That’s why essential public services are funded with taxes, not random arbitrary fees slapped on homeowners who say no to a city sewer hook-up.

The idea is simple: if it benefits the whole community, the whole community pays in. And yes, while we could debate whether property taxes are a just or efficient system (spoiler: they’re not), at least they’re applied evenly and transparently.

But the non-user fee? That’s not a tax. That’s a workaround. That’s local government saying, “We didn’t get enough voluntary customers, so we’re going to invoice the holdouts until they submit. Because we can.”

And this is exactly why you don’t want governments to have multiple attempts to access your wallet.

Every separate fee, surcharge, or “contribution” is another opportunity to justify, market, spin, and guilt you into compliance. First it’s sewer. Then stormwater. Then broadband. Then parks. Every department with a deficit and a compelling story gets a new “fee.”

Government should get one shot at your wallets and pocketbooks, through one clean mechanism. And then it should be forced to prioritize like the rest of us. Budget. Adjust. Make choices. Instead, the trend is to carve up the funding pie into a thousand little bills, each sold as necessary, each small enough to avoid resistance ….until you’re paying more in “fees” than you ever would have paid in taxes.

And yes, I’ll say it: we should eliminate property taxes altogether. They penalize ownership, punish retirees on fixed incomes, and tie your tax bill to real estate speculation you can’t control. But that’s a bigger battle for another day.

For now, we need to stop local governments from disguising illegal taxation as “service fees,” especially when the service was declined, unused, and unwanted.

So here we are: the county has drawn a line. Chairman Henry made the motion. Commissioner Tharpe made the case. The commission made the right call. Now the question is: Will Ringgold do the right thing…or cling to a petty nonsensical fee that should’ve never existed in the first place?

Because the non-user fee isn’t about infrastructure. It’s about obedience. And if your local government is charging you for saying no, it’s not managing a voluntary compact or even a utility. It’s managing you.