Rockmart gives SPLOST funding OK for fall vote
The Rockmart City Council is on board with extending the Special Purpose, Local Option Sales Tax fund through 2026 ahead of the expiration date on the current draw that was approved in 2014.
Council members voted unanimously to approve the intergovernmental agreement put forth to the municipalities and the county government that determines how much funding each entity gets from the single penny sales tax each year.
Much of those funds will go to the county and the City of Cedartown, both whom are set after press time this week on Monday and Tuesday to hold votes of their own on the agreement.
Rockmart officials negotiated some 20 percent of the funds from the SPLOST extension to come to the city if voters approve of it in the fall election.
Additionally, they seek to provide a generic outline of what categories will be spent for SPLOST this go around, with more specific project proposals to be voted up or down for spending later.
“By being generalized in this, we can select the projects and we say we’re going to pick one of these before we start another project,” City Manager Jeff Ellis explained.
Additionally, he pointed out that by placing money aside for infrastructure projects in one category, or recreation projects in another the funds can also be available for use to help when emergencies happen in specific areas where SPLOST funds can be handy.
The hope was for officials to potentially get a larger portion of the funds for the forthcoming extension as the city continues to grow, but Ellis told the council prior to their vote they still have a good deal in place. Their 20.03 percent of the full $32 million being sought in the forthcoming SPLOST extension being proposed for the November ballot will last through 2026, and give the city some $6.4 million to work with overall out of the fund.
The county would get a larger portion of the fund, and Cedartown the next largest chunk.
The City of Aragon gets the smallest percentage of SPLOST funds returned. Their council voted to approve moving forward on the extension with their approval of the intergovernmental agreement back during their July meeting.
Ellis said the fund is good for taxpayers because it allows for the cities and counties across the state to undertake projects for the public good without having to raise property taxes in the process.
“If we tried to raise $6 million over 5 years, the millage rate would go up 4 or 5 mills to raise that kind of money in that amount of time,” Ellis said.
City Clerk Pam Herring added that residents when thinking about the SPLOST also need to consider the increase in recent years of additional dollars coming in from outside the county, especially at baseball and softball tournaments utilizing recreation fields.
“That’s allowing the people who come through our city help pay for things we do with SPLOST, and that matters,” Herring said.
Ellis added in his many years with the city, SPLOST provides a benefit not just calculated in dollars, but in overall growth.
“If we didn’t have this portion of the SPLOST we can invest, we’d still be like we were in the 1950s or 60s, a tiny little town that no one even knew existed,” he said.
SPLOST since its inception at the state level in past decades is overall doing well, with the local collections on the long term on the rise. The extension in 2014 continues through 2020, and at least on the county level is getting close to reaching target levels.
The county sought $19 million as part of their SPLOST funding for collections that wrap up in 18 months, with around $15.5 million having coming in thus far. Some $2.6 million of the overall fund remains unassigned for projects.
SPOLOST collections on an annual basis have projected to increase as past targets have been short, but with improvements in the economy they began meeting targets in FY 2018, and are on track to reach near a $3 million level as they have stayed below the $2.5 million limit for most of the life of the current fund, and just for the county.
Much of that spending is on facilities, equipment and new public safety vehicles, a practice undertaken by many municipalities across the state.
Rockmart on the other hand avoids using SPLOST funds for vehicles for the sole reason that Ellis believes vehicles should come out of general funds.
He said the city might have to at least make an exception to that rule as they look at the cost of a new ladder truck for the Rockmart Fire Department, but much will depend on collections and costs before that decision is finalized.
In the meantime the city is already looking at ways they could use the money if voters decide to approve the extension later this year. Among those could be but are not yet set in stone upgrades to the water system, lighting on Highway 278 and even paying down some of the city’s debts on past spending initiatives if needed.