A committee tasked with paring projects down for a potential regional transportation sales tax has put together its mass transit priorities.
While none of the transit projects would operate in Fayette County, their $3 billion price tag will cut in half the available funding for roads in metro Atlanta. The projects would leave $3.1 billion to spend on road, bridge, pedestrian and other projects.
Transit projects on the list are not set in stone, however, as they will require a full vote of the 21-member Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable by Oct. 15 of this year.
Like each of the 10 counties in the metro Atlanta region, Fayette County has two representatives on the roundtable: Fayette County Commission Chairman Herb Frady and Fayetteville Mayor Ken Steele.
The roundtable met to discuss road, pedestrian and aviation project priorities Tuesday afternoon as The Citizen was going to press.
After a recent round of cuts recommended by the Atlanta Regional Commission further trimmed projects in Fayette County, Frady remarked that he felt Fayette was becoming “a donor county” to the transportation sales tax, meaning it would be paying more into the tax than the benefit it would see returned by constructed projects.
Fayette County is projected to pay about $205 million into the regional sales tax if the SPLOST is approved region-wide for a 10-year period. That’s about 2.5 percent of the entire expected $8 billion take.
The transit projects approved by the roundtable executive committee last week includes restoration of bus service for Clayton County, funding for the GRTA Xpress commuter bus service and transit for the “Atlanta Beltline” redevelopment project.
Also in for funding is a MARTA “State of Good Repair” project as well as a “Clifton Corridor Transit Line” and the “Northwest Corridor to Town Center.”
There is a chance that list could change after it is handed off to the full roundtable, which is slated for Aug. 15. The roundtable is expected to approve the final list no later than Oct. 15.
Critics of the regional transportation sales tax have complained that Fayette County won’t be allowed to vote it down. The vote is based on a regionwide tally, meaning that votes will be aggregated with all 10 counties lumped together.
Which ultimately means that if the tax is adopted region-wide, it doesn’t matter whether Fayette gets a majority vote in favor or not: the tax will be assessed here regardless.
The regional sales tax process was created by the Georgia legislature earlier this year.
