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Like school bond, SPLOST is not ‘us vs. them’

By J. FRANK LYNCH

With two weeks to go before the big day, polls show that the vast majority of Americans have already made up their minds about who’ll they vote for in the presidential race. But no polls have been conducted to measure support for or against a couple of local issues that will also appear on the ballot.

One is a $65 million bond referendum to fund school construction. As far as I know, Fayette County voters have never defeated a school bond referendum.

They have twice voted down Special Purpose Local Option Tax (SPLOST) initiatives for schools, but history shows that both times the defeats were victims of bad politics, not a lack of concern for crowded classrooms.

Voters will likely support this 2004 bond issue as well. It won’t raise taxes because payments won’t be due until the current bond indebtedness is paid off.

And it offers a “line of credit” approach to construction funding that allows the Board of Education to tap into it as building needs arise.

It’s anybody’s guess how Fayette voters will support the SPLOST initiative for road construction, however.

Should voters approve, an extra one-cent sales tax will be added to most retail purchases in Fayette County. A conservative estimate is that at least $116 million will be raised over the five-year life of the tax.

As agreed to by the County Commission, 70 percent of those funds would be used as up-front money to apply for federal and state grants to develop the county’s proposed $400 million transportation plan.

Think of it as a down payment on the purchase of a house.

The remaining 30 percent would be distributed among the cities and county to spend however they like on their own localized road projects.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown is opposed to that split in revenue.

Brown argues that because the city is home to roughly a third of the county’s population, it is entitled to a third of all the money the sales tax might bring in. Brown argues that by denying the city its “fair” share, the county is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

He has done a good job of raising suspicion among his constituents that they won’t get anything from the tax.

Truth is, Peachtree City is in line to get the lion’s share of the 30 percent, or about $16 million.

If the SPLOST fails, Peachtree City and the rest of Fayette County will get nothing.

One of Brown’s common refrains is that none of the improvement projects at the top of the county’s list will benefit Peachtree City. He whines that it’s not fair a Fayetteville bypass is the top priority.

This argument might hold water if Peachtree City weren’t part of Fayette County, and if the people who live in Peachtree City never went anywhere.

But I believe they do.

In fact, many people who live in Peachtree City actually go to Fayetteville from time to time, though a Peachtree City councilman earlier this year confided in me that he didn’t know why any of them would.

“They all shop in Buckhead,” he sniffed. (This is the same councilman who in a public meeting a year ago called folks who live in Coweta County “riffraff,” so consider the source.)

Anyway, only a numbskull wouldn’t know by now that Fayetteville is the center of retail trade in Fayette County. It has the county’s only auto dealership, bowling alley and movie theaters.

Peachtree City has three big-box stores. Fayetteville probably has a dozen.

I bet all the commercial space in Peachtree City combined wouldn’t add up to the square footage in the Fayette Pavilion, which we remind you once again is THE LARGEST SHOPPING CENTER IN ALL OF GEORGIA.

But Fayetteville officials aren’t griping that they deserve more. Instead, they’ve signed a resolution supporting the SPLOST.

The reality is that all of Fayette County bears a burden from the thousands of outsiders who come here every day to work, shop and eat.

People who don’t live here will be paying the majority of that extra cent on the dollar tax. Put in that context, it would be foolish for anyone NOT to advocate passage of the SPLOST.

Is it in Peachtree City’s best interest that commuters who now clog the streets around the Courthouse Square in Fayetteville find alternate routes to get to their destinations?

Absolutely.

Should residents of Fayetteville be concerned that people who live in Coweta can’t get to to their jobs in Peachtree City’s industrial park?

Of course.

That’s the way a “community” approaches its challenges. Perhaps Steve Brown has forgotten that Peachtree City IS part of the broader community known as Fayette County, a point emphasized by former Mayor Fred Brown in a Chamber of Commerce forum on the SPLOST last month.

The elder Brown recalled a time when the county and cities shared a much more uniformed vision of the future.

“We should not be thinking of individual jurisdictions,” Fred Brown said on Sept. 14. “We’re a county first; we’re all part of Fayette County.”

When voters go to the polls Nov. 2, they’ll consider the school bond referendum not as an “us vs. them” issue, but as a “we” issue.

Hopefully, they’ll do the same with the SPLOST decision.