On March 21(Feb. 27 early voting) Fayette County citizens will have the opportunity to voice their opinion on whether to support a special local option sales tax (SPLOST) to fund essential projects across the county.
These projects are all covered under four categories: safety, infrastructure, roads and quality of life, in every municipality and the county at-large.
Nobody argues against the necessity of the projects, and county officials often pivot back to the costly emergency repairs following torrential rains in December of 2015. The debate is always centered on how to go about funding the work.
From my perspective this is not rocket science, the solution is binary, and the choice is pretty clear.
Fayette County citizens will either (1) pay the entire cost of these repairs through taxes and fees; or (2) Fayette County citizens will pay some of the cost through SPLOST, supplemented by non-residents that shop in the county.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll always accept the assistance of non-residents traveling on our roads and using our facilities to subsidize our infrastructure.
This is probably the reason that almost every other county in the state of Georgia already has a SPLOST for this purpose. After all, the more financial support you can extract from non-residents, the less taxation must be levied against residents.
Here in Fayette, we have a long history of keeping our taxes low while maintaining a high level of service and infrastructure, having outstanding schools and responsive emergency services, and presenting a high quality, welcoming and safe community environment to grow and thrive.
It’s for this reason that I will be voting strongly in favor of the SPLOST and I urge like-minded Fayette county citizens to do likewise.
Terrence K. Williamson
Fayetteville, Ga.
