The Henry County Board of Commissioners held a joint called meeting with the cities of Hampton, Locust Grove, McDonough and Stockbridge on April 15 to discuss the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST) referendum.
Transportation and Planning Director Sam Baker began with a presentation explaining to citizens what a TSPLOST is, statistics about TSPLOST, shared the type of transportation options that can be considered for funding through the TSPLOST and detailed the timeline process.
“There are a few activities that must be completed before the November election,” said Baker. “The cities and county need to come to an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) by June 15. By July 15 the Henry County Board of Commissioners needs to pass a resolution calling for a TSPLOST referendum and by August 4, we plan to begin our education outreach to provide information to our citizens on TSPLOST.”
Following Baker’s presentation, Financial Services Director David Smith shared information regarding the potential revenue that the county and cities are expected to generate if the TSPLOST is approved, and he stressed the importance of an IGA.
He said if the county and cities agree to move forward with an IGA the TSPLOST could expect to generate approximately $210 million over a five-year period, and without it, the county and cities as a whole would lose roughly $52 million.
Smith highlighted a comparison of three options for officials to review that included a 70/30 IGA percentage split, a 75/25 IGA percentage split and figures for each city and the county if an IGA is not approved by all parties involved.
SPLOST Transportation Director Roque Romero shared during the meeting a preliminary list of TSPLOST projects by district.
Henry County Manager Cheri Hobson-Matthews assured officials that the initial project list can be revised and that the county will take into consideration any other projects that can be shared with the county that the cities have identified.
“We want to make sure that we have projects that are going to provide much needed relief to our Henry County residents,” said Hobson-Matthews. “We’ve also put a big emphasis on making sure that if we have projects that are shovel ready that we can move those projects because the most important thing is getting projects completed.”
Following the presentation, county and city officials were able to ask questions and share comments about the referendum.
The meeting concluded with Attorney Sam VanVolkenburgh who discussed key items in the IGA that will need to be agreed upon, such as the project list, the distribution of funds and issuance of debt.
To view the meeting in its entirety, visit henrycounty-ga.com, log on to the Henry County Facebook page or Henry County YouTube page.
Here we go, approve a tax, paid for by citizens but citizens have no say in where the tax increase will be used.. “Henry County Manager Cheri Hobson-Matthews assured officials that the initial project list can be revised”
I believe the project list should be FINAL prior to the Nov vote to allow citizens to know what district their tax money is being spent to improve the entire county not just 1 or 2 districts run by corrupt democrats.
The TSPLOST project list will be final before the November 2021 referendum. What the county manager meant when she stated that the initial project list can be revised was that the TSPLOST project list presented at this meeting on April 15th was just a draft and was subject to change based on input and feedback received from the municipalities and the citizens of Henry County. The Henry County Government plans to hold one-on-one meetings with each municipality as well as hold two townhall meetings to solicit citizen input in the upcoming months.