Cobb SPLOST- Vote No

The Cobb SPLOST proposed to spend tax and spend an additional $125 million a year for 6 years, from 2015 to 2021.  Water, sewers, storm sewers, roads and bridges comprise the critical infrastructure, but do not receive the bulk of the funding. 

This SPLOST is a general supplemental addition to capital and operating budgets with lots of “Wants” and few “Needs”.  You need to wonder why government needs to build “senior centers” when their critical infrastructure is rotting. Public transit is easily replaced by private enterprise.  Fire and Police always end up being a black hole for tax money. Do people realize they cost too much and arrive too late ?  County and City staff, consultants and developers benefit most from government controlled building campaigns. 

 

To Be Implemented If Additional Funding Becomes Available (page 52 – 70) includes mainly road and bridge maintenance, but isn’t included in this SPLOST.  It’s a Trojan carrot.

 

Bribes to Cities (page 42 – 52) includes $184,895,823 with about 20% road and bridge maintenance.  The County guys need the City guys to be the cheerleaders for this money grab.

 

Total Transportation Projects $287,331,467 (page 11) includes not very many centerline miles, because they pay double for everything.  Milling and resurfacing costs should be $150,000 per centerline mile for a 2 lane.  They will pay double.  Intersection re-dos should cost $200,000, but the county will spend $1million to $2 million on each, because of unnecessary “cya” engineering work.  They also no longer take the lowest bid and don’t require contractors to purchase performance bonds to reimburse the county when they screw up.

 

Cobb County

2014 Budget $819,461,337 Population 697,553 Annual Cost per person $1174.77

2014 Operations Budget $323,324,112 assume the $496,137,225 goes to schools  2015 Additional SPLOST annual cost $125,000,000 Additional Annual Cost per person $179.20

The cost to households for adding a 1 cent to the sales tax is $100 for each $10,000 spent per year.  A total 7 cent sales tax costs $700 per year for each $10,000 spent per year. If the SPLOST fails to pass, Cobb’s sales tax will sink to 5 cents total and that’s a good place to be right now.

 

Cobb voters should demand to see the maintenance plan and cost for the sanitary sewer and water treatment maintenance and storm sewer and road maintenance for the entire county before they say yes to this budget supplement. I bet they’ve been robbing these accounts for years.  If these systems get into trouble, it costs $ billions to fix.

 

If voters are sufficiently “pissed off” about the Braves Bond Grab, a “clear as day” expose’ of the projects on the SPLOST should finish the job.  If, on the other hand, some voter groups become cheerleaders for this boondoggle, we are in for a tight race.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader