What’s this about yet another sales tax decided on by
regional transportation boards and GDOT?

Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning Organization
(VLMPO)
explained T-SPLOST
at the regular monthly meeting,
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA).
Georgia HB 277, which was passed by the legislature and signed into law
last year,
calls for a 1% regional sales tax (T-SPLOST) to fund
transportation projects.

The region including Lowndes County has 18 counties,

the same counties as for the

Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC),
which is the organization Corey Hull works for and that

hosts VLMPO.
According to SGRC,

those counties are:

Atkinson, Bacon, Ben Hill, Berrien, Brantley, Brooks, Charlton, Clinch, Coffee, Cook, Echols, Irwin, Lanier, Lowndes, Pierce, Tift, Turner, and Ware.

All municipalities in the region were supposed to submit a list of
proposed projects by March 31.
Here is

Lowndes County’s list.
The City of Valdosta submitted an even more extensive and expensive list;
we’ll post that later.

In June and July an executive roundtable will pick among the projects
proposed.
Current estimates are that T-SPLOST will raise
$55 – $80 million dollars per year, so the committee must
select the project lists down to fit that estimate.
(I don’t know whether that is for this region or for the state.)
In October of this year the roundtable must select the projects.
The voters will vote on them in a referendum 21 August 2012.
If the voters don’t approve T-SPLOST for a region, municipalities
in that region must pay a penalty.

Here’s

the video of Corey Hull explaining T-SPLOST to VLCIA:

Corey Hull of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Metropolitan Planning
Organization (VLMPO)
at the regular monthly meeting,
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA)
Norman Bennett, Roy Copeland, Tom Call, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett chairman,
J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Brad Lofton Executive Director,

Allan Ricketts Program
Manager, 15 February 2011.

Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

More in the
next TSPLOST post

-jsq