Questions answered by Lamar Paris, County Commissioner
Q. How much will the special election to be held on May 11 cost the county?
A. This special election to replace Congressman Nathan Deal’s Congressional seat will cost the county taxpayers between $20,000 and $25,000. This is money that was not budgeted. The total cost to the 9th Congressional District (15 North Georgia counties) will be approximately $350,000. This special election is May 11 (which will allow the winner to complete Congressman’s Deal’s term from now until Dec. 31, 2010), and then there will be another election (primary) held in July to vote for the same Congressional seat for a new two year term. So, theoretically, if one person wins the election on May 11, he will go to Washington, DC until the end of the year, and if he does not win the July election, the winner of the July primary will then be the new Congressman and would take office January 1, 2011.
This is another example of how county taxpayers get dumped on because there is not adequate legislation adopted to allow the Governor to simply appoint a replacement if there is less than a year left in a congressional term, or, simply allow a newly elected Congressman to fill an unexpired term, plus the new term. Either of these two options would avoid the need for a special election and the assorted cost to counties.
Q. Will early voting be available for the special called election?
A. As of today, Wed. April 21, 2010, ( when I am writing this column) our early voting office in the courthouse has been open since April 12 with only 68 votes being cast and will be open until May 7th. During this special election early voting period, we are required to have three employees (instead of the usual one) in the Registrar’s office at all times. There could be less than 15% of the county voters actually vote in this special called election. This is also being paid for by your property tax dollars.
Q. Do you blame Congressman Deal for this extra election and assorted cost?
A. No, because it is really the makeup of the laws that is creating the problem. We have many politicians in Georgia this year that have resigned their state offices to qualify and run for a different office. We would like to all think that if a politician signs up for an election and wins, he should serve out his term. But there are so many that feel like they must take the opportunity to run for a different office at an opportune time, it would be hard to hold it against all of them.
Q. Why is the county building a roof over the horse arena instead of building our firemen a new operations center? We understand they are now sleeping in a trailer. Shouldn’t our firemen have priority over a horse?
A. Absolutely and we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to see that our firemen have the absolute best equipment available to them. When laying out our priorities for our SPLOST projects, our initial estimate of sales tax revenue to be collected over six years was $31,500,000. However, with the recession, that number has now been adjusted down to $19,000,000.
Our original estimate to add on to the existing fire operations facility at the Fire Department has now been increased drastically once they asked us to consider building them a completely new building instead of remodeling the old one. There is simply not enough money currently to build that building with all the other projects that were previously scheduled through SPLOST. Although they may not be in perfect quarters, our firemen are safe and secure with the facilities they have right now. We will and always have looked after our firemen because they are an important part of our dedicated county employees whose sole job is to protect the citizens of this county. They do an excellent job for which we are very thankful. Their operation is funded with your property tax dollars.