Wednesday, March 24, 2004
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004 |
| Brown: Give PTC 35% of new tax By J. FRANK LYNCH To hear Steve Brown explain it, Peachtree City deserves roughly 35 percent of the revenue a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax initiative would generate, based on his estimate that 35 percent of the county’s population resides within his town. Others, particularly county leadership and officials with the city of Fayetteville, point out the disparity created on a straight percent-as-population division of the penny tax pie, because of the huge economic draw of the Fayette Pavilion where an estimated 52 percent of shoppers hail from outside the county. The Pavilion lies entirely within the city limits of Fayetteville. But no firm statistics exist to support either cause. According to Brown, the city’s population as of this year is approximately 35,060, an increase of more than 3,000 from the 2000 Census estimate of 31,580. That same year, the census said the county’s population was 91,263, a figure it estimates had risen to 96,611 by July 1, 2002. Census estimates for Fayette’s population as of July 1, 2003 are due to be released around April 1. But the Atlanta Regional Commission estimated earlier this year that the county was home to approximately 98,000 people. And county government, likewise, embraces a population total of about 98,400 as of last fall. But the Fayette County Development Authority claims the population of the county is more like 102,000 and growing, using their own formula for counting residents and new home construction. Still more difficult to prove is where sales tax revenue is generated. Brown and others on the Peachtree City Council contend that population aside, Peachtree City accounts for at least half of all sales tax revenue generated in the county, something that is nearly impossible to prove. An official at the State Revenue Department confirmed that sales tax collected from individual businesses and funneled to the state for calculation isn’t broken down by municipality, just by county. Any SPLOST funds are then redistributed back to the county level to Tax Commissioner George Wingo, who divvies it up to the various municipalities based on previous agreements. “We were overwhelmingly the sales tax champion before the Pavilion came in,” claimed Brown of the contribution Peachtree City businesses make to the county’s economy, adding that sales at the Peachtree City Wal-Mart and Home Depot stores are up 30 percent over last year. “We were the big one anyway, and now we’ve boosted that higher.” But Peachtree City doesn’t come close to having the total square footage of retail space that’s located in Fayetteville at the Pavilion. In fact, at 1.7 million square feet, the Fayette Pavilion ranks as the largest open-air retail shopping complex in the state of Georgia, and one of the largest in the nation. According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Fayette Pavilion is the second largest retail center statewide overall, surpassed only by the Mall of Georgia in Gwinnett County. The center includes 1.4 million square feet of space purchased last year for $172 million by Inland Retail REI of Oak Brook, Ill. Home Depot and Target corporations own their buildings within the complex, which adds another 300,000 square feet of space to the mix. In 2002, Fayette County generated just under $1 billion — an estimated $951,480,000 — in retail sales, according to Brian Cardoza of the Fayette County Development Authority. That’s up from an estimated $670 million in retail sales counted by the Census Bureau in 1997, when the Pavilion was still under construction. The first stores began opening in the power center in 1995.
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