Wednesday, March 24, 2004
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004 |
| Chairman, mayor spat over tax split By J. FRANK LYNCH Peachtree City’s mayor insists he’s not out to sabotage a countywide SPLOST vote proposed for November, but just wants county leadership to give Fayette’s largest municipality its fair slice of the road projects likely to be funded from an estimated $110 million in revenue a new penny sales tax would raise. To support his position, Brown has been bragging on House Bill 1714, a fast-track piece of legislation passed in the House last week and now being considered by a Senate committee. Brown called the bill “the biggest piece of legislation affecting Georgia cities in the past 10 years,” and suggested that Peachtree City’s challenge to Fayette County’s road project priorities was among the catalysts that propelled the bill through the legislature, with support from the Georgia Municipal Association and Association County Commissioners Georgia. “House Bill 1714 justifies what Peachtree City has been saying all along,” Brown claimed. “People are saying, ‘Look what’s happening to Peachtree City.’ There’s no doubt about that.” County Commission Chairman Greg Dunn discounted that. “He’s trying to make people believe that Peachtree City is the poster child for SPLOST, and nobody else is saying that,” said Dunn. “He makes it harder for people who are seriously working for the betterment of the community,” said Dunn “He hasn’t seen our final proposal yet, and he’s already told you and the newspapers and the mayors of the Atlanta region that we’re going to do a job on the people of Peachtree City, and we don’t feel that way.” If approved, the new law will guarantee Georgia cities a share of SPLOST revenue now controlled almost exclusively at the county government level. Brown knows, however, that HB 1714 won’t necessarily apply to the county’s road funding initiative, which Dunn said last week will be firmed up well in advance of the July 1 date on which any bills passed this session would become law. Besides, the SPLOST referendum, in the works for months, would be grandfathered, anyway, Dunn claims. The top priority on the county’s working list of projects is the planned East Fayetteville Bypass, a road that would run from Kenwood Road at Ga. Highway 314 in the north part of the county, following a path roughly along Corinth Road south to where Jeff Davis Drive intersects with County Line Road. It would cost an estimated $67 million. No Peachtree City projects rank among the top three in priority lists made public so far. That’s why Brown is calling on the commission to “do the right thing” and promise to abide by the new guidelines for fairer distribution of the penny sales tax proposed in the legislation, regardless of the outcome. The new law would require cities and counties to enter into “intergovernmental agreements” to decide which projects are funded by the penny sales tax. If cities and counties can’t reach agreement, the division would be based on population. At a March 3 meeting of county and city leaders, Brown presented his own priority list of Peachtree City road projects along with a request for $23 million of the initial $110 million the SPLOST is expected to raise. Dunn and other county and city leaders scoffed, but Brown declares that Peachtree City’s request represents just 21.1 percent of the total SPLOST anticipated revenue. The city could be demanding its fair share of 35 percent, based on Brown’s estimate that the city’s population is about 35 percent of the total county population, the mayor said. “Peachtree City voters are not going to vote for projects that take money out of our pockets and give it to somebody else,” Brown said. “We have asked (Dunn) for 15 percent less than what the Association of County Commissions Georgia says we should be applicable for.” “If I was Greg Dunn I would take that offer and run, because it’s a good deal,” Brown said. Replied Dunn, “He has yet to see our final proposal, because we’re not finished with it yet.” “He doesn’t have a clue what we’re working on.” “It’s not settled, we haven’t broken it down yet,” said Dunn of the final list of projects the SPLOST would fund. “The cities and the county are going to come up with something agreeable to everyone, including Peachtree City. We are well aware that 35 percent of our citizens live there. We’re looking out for their welfare just as we are every other constituent in the county.” Besides, said Dunn, the bulk of state transportation money already committed to Fayette County projects over the next three to four years is already going to Peachtree City, mostly for improvements to Ga. Highway 54 West and the Ga. Highway 74 South widening project accelerated last year by Sen. Mitch Seabaugh and others. “For two years now, all of us in the county have acted in good faith in developing this plan,” said Dunn. “We’ve worked at it, we’ve debated the issues, we’ve gotten it done. The problem is nobody ever does it this good, and now, right at the end, at a critical point in the plan, Brown wants more, just for himself. “What he’s saying with his assault on the county commission is, he sees an opportunity to amass a lot of money for the city of Peachtree City,” said Dunn. “Brown likes to think of himself as being a regional thinker, a regional planner, but he is incapable of thinking of this as a countywide transportation plan.”
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