The Fayette County Commission is expected Thursday night to formally approve funding for the new public safety headquarters and emergency operations center.
The county has been selected to receive a $1 million grant to construct the emergency operations center, which will be merged with a fire station to replace the county’s fire station in downtown Fayetteville.
The commission is also expected to approve putting a referendum for Sunday alcohol sales on the July 31 primary ballot. The county decided not to put it on the ballot last year because it would have required holding a special election.
If approved by voters countywide, Sunday sales would start Aug. 26 at stores located in unincorporated Fayette County.
The emergency operations center will be built on land it already owns at the corner of Lee Street and Melear Way, just off Ga. Highway 85 south. Part of the project will include a new county fire station for downtown Fayetteville.
The grant award to the Fayette County Emergency Management Agency was announced by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal Nov. 4.
While the EOC is designed to be used in the case of a disaster, it often has been activated in advance of potentially extreme severe weather, such as the tornados earlier this year that ultimately missed Fayette County.
The new EOC will enhance the safety of emergency management personnel and also significantly improve the coordination of response and interoperability to incidents in the community and throughout the region, county officials said.
Replacing the emergency operations center has been in the county’s capital budget for about 10 years, County Manager Jack Krakeel has said.
In other business the commission will hear a presentation on the results from the recent recreation needs survey of local residents. The detailed survey questioned if voters would support more funding for recreation, and the most favorable responses (likely and very likely to support) reached 39 percent for either a special purpose local option sales tax or a bond issue. That same support only won 25 percent support for paying more in taxes to fund a specific list of recreation improvements.
Likewise, the tax increase drew a 47 percent “not likely to support” result and the SPLOST concept had 37 percent response rate for “not likely to support.”
