County and municipal officials met Aug. 5 to begin work on a new agreement for splitting the $50 million in projected revenues from the 2012 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax that will go before voters early next year.
Though the meeting was cordial, no real work was accomplished because county officials had not made the decisions needed to kick off actual negotiations.
Commission Chairman Danny Yearwood told the mayors and top administrators that he did not know if the new SPLOST cycle would be five or six years long.
To have a six-year cycle, there would have to be a “Tier 1” project that would be funded off the top before the rest of the sales tax proceeds could be distributed among all of the local governments based on population.
By law, the top tier includes only county projects that also have a state function, such as a courthouse, jail, health department, or county administrative building that also houses constitutional offices.
The county’s new courthouse and jail were Tier 1 projects in the current SPLOST that went into effect July 1, 2006. The only new Tier 1 project of interest in Barrow County would be a health department facility.
While a $1.5 million health department project is on a “wish list” of potential county projects distributed at the meeting, Yearwood told the mayors that he is not particularly interested in that because the health department’s existing space is adequate and the county would incur higher ongoing operating expenses.
During the meeting, a member of the finance staff handed the chairman a copy of a SPLOST guide from the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia that said the existing bond debt for the criminal justice center could qualify as a Tier 1 expenditure for the future SPLOST. But municipal officials afterwards indicated they want to confirm that.
Yearwood did make it clear that the county’s top priority for the new revenue is the continued repayment of debt on the 2005 general obligation bonds that funded the construction of the courthouse and jail, as well as the continued repayment of the county’s obligation for the Bear Creek Reservoir. Together, those debt payments currently absorb about $5.3 million of the $8 million in annual SPLOST proceeds, leaving less than $3 million to be split among the governments.
Under the existing agreement with the mayors, the county gets 75 percent of the revenues left over after the debt payments. Under the new agreement, the cities would get a little bigger share.
Based on 2009 population estimates presented at the meeting, the county would get 63 percent of the remaining funds each year; Winder, 20 percent; Auburn, 11 percent; Statham, 4 percent; Bethlehem, 2 percent; and Carl, about half of 1 percent.
However, there has been some discussion among the mayors about waiting for the 2010 census estimates.
Auburn Mayor Linda Blechinger also announced during the meeting that the Barrow County Mayors Association had selected Braselton Town Manager Jennifer Dees and Winder Mayor Chip Thompson as its representatives for the continuing SPLOST negotiations.
Blechinger also said each of the municipalities has selected one citizen representative to serve on an advisory committee, as requested by the county. Dees also spoke briefly, explaining that municipal officials can’t plan their project “wish lists” until they have a good idea of how much future funding to expect.
She encouraged county officials to go ahead and firm up the county projects for the new SPLOST, designate whether they are Tier 1 or Tier 2 projects, and say how much of the future sales tax revenue would be designated for them.
CFO Rose Kisaalita said the county and municipal officials would meet again in September.
