Questions answered by Lamar Paris, County Commissioner
Q. Do you think you will have any new local road projects coming up this next year?
A. It depends. Part of the answer will lie with the new proposed Transportation TSPLOST sales tax vote in July. The Conservative Business Alliance will be hosting a forum on the TSPOST January 23rd at the Civic Center. We will try to answer questions regarding the new proposed TSPLOST at that time.
Q. Why will the TSPLOST election have anything to do with local road projects? I thought the TSPLOST was for regional transportation projects that GDOT would be building.
A. Local funding is a part of the TSPLOST program that many people do not yet know about. A full 25% of the TSPLOST funding will be returned to local governments (cities and counties) for the use on our own local county roads and city streets. This money will be distributed based on a special formula set up by the state. The formula tends to favor smaller counties.
Q. Do you know how much money our county could expect to collect over the next ten years for our own county roads and city streets?
A. I do not have the exact number yet, but it will be in the vicinity of $18 million to $20 million over the next ten years. That is nearly two million dollars a year in addition to what we are currently receiving from the state GDOT of about $ 400,000 per year and about 1/2 million dollars from our own SPLOST sales tax . This additional TSPLOST revenue could provide a tremendous impact on road improvements for all counties, especially rural counties like Union, Fannin and Towns. This extra funding would allow us to catch up on paved road resurfacing projects that we are all behind on, and would allow us to also aggressively begin to improve, widen and pave older county gravel roads and plan for future needs.
Q. Did the county stay within budget for this year?
A. I have not seen the final figures, but it will be very close. Because we have such an excellent finance department, your tax money is distributed wisely and I want to thank all elected officials for doing their part to keep our property taxes down. I have said this before, but we also have some of the hardest working county employees who not only see their day to day duties as their job, but also want to improve our county and make it the best it can be.
Q. What construction projects will you be looking at in the new year?
A. I will confess to you that all the wonderful projects we have completed in the past two years, have been stressful for all of us, although very fulfilling. We all have our normal job duties plus the additional work load of approving designs, worrying about how and when is the best time to start our SPLOST projects and supervision of the projects, which is a very large task itself. After the recent opening of the Community Center, we are all pretty worn out.