What is the County Spending $1,500,000 on for the Rec Department?

Is it an indoor pool? Is it extra equipment? Is it re-surfacing the parking lot?  Is it to build bleachers?  Is it to update concession stands and restrooms?  Is it to continue competing with Meeks Parks to become the best county park in the area? Fannin County Board of Commissioners has not answered the question yet.

Is the county spending $3,500,000 to build an administration building or is it to build a parking deck?  Will $3,500,000 be enough to build either? The Board of Commissioners has not answered the question yet.

Archives from Fannin County Board of Commissioner’s meetings show that Commission Chair Simonds would like a parking deck, but Post-Commissioners Johnson and Sosebee prefer a satellite administrative building.  No records exist of what the actual building would be or how the Commissioners arrived at an estimated cost for either building.

Archives from Fannin County Board of Commissioners meetings show that the Commissioners are concerned about the condition of restroom facilities at Tom Boyd and Horseshoe Bend.  Archives also show that the Commissioners are contemplating some sort of county park with docks at the TVA complex on Lake Blue Ridge.  No records exist on what the cost of refurbishing the restrooms is and no records exist beyond analysis of grant money for docks about if county park facilities will be built at the TVA complex.

Yet, the Board of Commissioners is asking voters to approve a 1₵ county-wide sales tax for the next six years to fund the unspecified recreation equipment/facilities, capital outlay projects, roads maintenance and infrastructure projects when voters vote yes for SPLOT 2016.

A survey of other Georgia counties’ descriptions about how they will allocate the sales tax money shows more detail.  Glynn County’s 2016 referendum lists 35 separate road projects by name and cost.  Henry County lists 18 specific project with clear names like Probate Court Building Improvements, Ambulances, Sewer to Fairview.  The information is easy to find because everything is listed on a SPLOST page on the county’s website. To-date project expenditures and outcomes of previous SPLOST projects are listed as well. Fannin County does not provide this information to its voters and taxpayers on its website.

Fannin County’s unspecified SPLOST projects and accompanying estimates were the point of an Open Records Act complaint lodged by Fannin resident Joe Webb.  If the complaint held, the county would have had to pay fines. Jennifer Colangelo, Assistant Attorney General for Georgia, responded to Webb’s complaint and said that “The (Open Records) Act only requires the county to provide you with access to existing records”.  Since Fannin County has no records about specific SPLOST projects and estimated expenses, Fannin did not violate the Open Records Act.

This brings the topic back to the headline question:  what is the county spending $1,500,000 on for the Rec Department?

The Attorney General’s opinion on how specific a SPLOST ballot must be is “… the description and the purposes must be only so specific as to place the electorate on fair notice of the projects to which the tax will be voted.”

So, the six-years long 1₵ sales tax for which Fannin voters must vote yes or no on the SPLOST referendum becomes an individual question of do you, the voter, feel you understand what projects the county will pursue with the estimated $30,000,000 SPLOST revenues and you support these projects going forward.

SPLOST can be voted on each year, if need be.  Once voted on, a new SPLOST cannot happen for another six years.  98.7% of SPLOST ballots in Georgia pass on the first vote.  Between 2004-2009, all 152 Georgia counties held SPLOST referendums.  Only five counties did not pass SPLOST.  However, the next year, three of those counties, voted for SPLOST again, and it passed.