Special-purpose local-option sales tax

You've got residents from other counties coming and spending their dollars here in Forsyth County.

That's an impact on SPLOST dollars.

That helps keep property taxes down.

It's a continuous cycle, right?

Um, seems like city schools normally get better funding than county schools.

They can do SPLOST funds for sports and buildings and things like that easier.

But I enjoyed my time at Gordon Lee High School.

I was K through 12 in the Chickamauga City School system.

right absolutely there are also three constitutional amendments that will be on our ballot and we always encourage voters to do their research about those those can often be worded in a way that sometimes makes it a little challenging to figure out exactly what the intent is so we encourage people to research those issues and find out more and then on a very local level of course we do have local races in terms of County Commissioner school board, a couple of school board races and such.

But we have the SPLOST referendum here in Cobb.

So what can you tell us about that, Jacob?

So SPLOST is a 1% sales tax that funds capital projects like roads, courthouses, parks, libraries, public spaces, anything they can probably think of.

Safety facilities, if it passes, it would raise more than a billion dollars over six years to replace the current SPLOST when it expires in 2027.

So it is a big deal.

It's going to be on the very, very bottom of your ticket when you go vote.

They could be driving through and stopping at a gas station and buying snacks and refreshments for the road.

Hard to believe we're already at that time of the year.

Joining us here for the podcast today, County Manager David McKee is refreshed off of the August 25th work session where, David, a big topic of discussion there is SPLOST 9.

I feel like it was just...

Really felt like a few weeks ago we were talking about the vote upcoming for SPLOST 9, but now we're at implementation of projects.

So talk to us a little bit about what was covered during the work session about SPLOST.

Yeah, Russell, good morning.

Glad to be here.

We've, I'm going to say, filled out a very professional group of project managers under John Jefferson's direction.

And people just can't believe that.

And if you really think about it, our all-in budget, if you look at broadband and water utility and the PAC and all the enterprise funds plus the TIA funds that we use to pay roads and SPLOST and all that, we spend about $420, $450 million a year on All in in Columbia County.

All in everything we spend.

And the property tax we take in is $42 million.