Party members and other concerned citizens are urged to attend the commission meeting and voice their opposition to higher taxes, the group said.

At the last commission meeting on June 24, HCLP members were in the audience as Commissioners Curtis Adams, Larry Henry, Bill Hullander, Lou Miller and Fred Skillern formed a 5-4 majority that rejected an 18% property tax increase proposed by County Mayor Claude Ramsey. Instead, the commission adopted a continuation budget to enable county operations through the next commission meeting. The group said it is "urging commissioners to approve the reduced, no-new-taxes budget expected to be offered by Ramsey at the meeting Wednesday."

County party chairman Trevor Southerland, who attended local public schools, said, "I want to remind commissioners and voters that even with no tax increase, Hamilton County and its school system will still operate with the largest budgets in history due to growth in the tax base.

"The problem with our school system is not a lack of funding. We pay a lot for our government-run school system, but sadly a lot of the funding is spent in the wrong places for the wrong purposes by administration."

Southerland said more taxpayer money spent does not necessarily imply better schools. "Washington, D.C. and Atlanta spend roughly twice as much per student as Hamilton County, and yet it is obvious that their schools don't even perform as well as ours, let alone twice as well. Right here in Tennessee, we need only to look at Memphis to conclude that the highest taxes in the state have certainly not resulted in the best schools. The tragedy of higher taxes is that they are passed on to today's students when they graduate and have to make a living."

"The county school board and the County Commission should hold themselves accountable to citizens and tighten their belts, just as we have to do with our own budgets when we don't have the funds to do everything we want. After all, it is our money they are spending and they should treat it even more carefully than their own.

"If we want our economy to improve, we have to ease the burden on the ordinary citizens who are trying to make ends meet. We cannot tax ourselves into prosperity, as much as the pro-tax crowd may wish to believe we can. Libertarians urge the county commissioners to remember the citizens who are paying the bills every time they make fiscal decisions."