At review of transit plan, hints of new vote in ’20

After failure of last referendum, panel studies next steps.

Conversation at a Tuesday morning meeting suggested some Gwinnett officials could be targeting November 2020 for another transit referendum.

That’s far from a sure thing, though, and plenty of questions remain — including exactly what county residents would be voting on.

The Gwinnett Board of Commissioners received an update Tuesday on the work of the county’s new transit review committee, a 13-member group charged with looking over the county’s existing transit expansion plan and making recommendations on how it could be improved.

The committee asked for its deadline to be extended until the end of January, giving it an extra month to work and prepare recommendations.

District 1 Commissioner Jace Brooks, a Republican who recently announced he won’t be seeking reelection next fall, asked whether the committee’s extension would maintain a viable timeline “for a November referendum” on transit.

He was told it would. The review committee was formed largely as a reaction to Gwinnett’s most recent referendum on transit expansion, a March special election that failed by an 8-point margin. The committee’s not-so-unspoken goal is to try and make the transit plan — which currently calls for a passenger rail extension into the Norcross area and much more — more palatable for voters.

Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash, who spearheaded the transit push, has made no secret of her desire to have another referendum. She has previously suggested that a new vote would be held during a “big election” to draw as many voters as possible, but has stopped short of suggesting a specific time frame.

She took a similar stance Tuesday, saying Gwinnett needs more transit options and a referendum-approved sales tax is the only way to “do any kind of substantial improvement.” But the chairman, who is retiring next year after her term expires, batted away several questions about the possibility of a vote in 2020.

County officials and outside consultants have gotten the committee up to speed on the current transit plan and broken down potential funding scenarios for different options.

Moving forward, the committee will focus on three potential scenarios: one that keeps the rail line into Norcross but seeks to fill other holes in the plan; one that includes an extra rail line to the Gwinnett Place Mall area; and one that removes rail altogether and beefs up other options.

Financial constraints are being based on revenues from the same 30-year, 1 percent sales tax that would’ve been enacted had March’s referendum passed — a total of somewhere north of $5 billion. Scenarios using lesser sales taxes are also being considered.