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While no official vote was

taken, the Fayette County Commission decided during their retreat last

week to start the process for setting a Special Purpose Local Option Sales

Tax vote this fall.

The extra penny-on-the-dollar

tax, which is estimated to generate $101 million over a five-year period,

would be used to pay for Fayette's 30-year $400 million transportation

program.

"We don't need to

come up with all the money. We just have to have our portion," said

Commission Chairman Greg Dunn.

Commissioner Herb Frady wanted

the commission to vote on the issue, but Commissioner Linda Wells said

she would be more comfortable voting on the issue at a more public meeting.

Still, the consensus of the

board was to have county attorney Dennis Davenport start the process for

getting the vote to the public this November.

"We've got an obligation

to improve our infrastructure, and 53 percent of the cars at the Pavilion

are from out of the county," Frady said.

Dunn also told the board that

every project in the transportation plan had just been approved in the

Atlanta Regional Commission's 30-year plan.

"I don't know of

another county in the region that got all their projects approved,"

he said.

The next step is getting the

projects moved into the Transportation Improvement Plan. If the county

shows it will have the funds to help pay for the projects, it will go

a long way towards making the final cut, Dunn added.

The plan shows nearly $400

million in projects to keep the traffic snarls at a minimum over the next

30 years.

The county's political

leaders gathered late last year and prioritized projects to submit to

the Atlanta Regional Commission for funding.

When the plan was completed,

Dunn had met with the mayors of Fayette's cities and asked them to

prioritize three projects. When the list from all the jurisdictions were

unveiled last week, there was a striking similarity in the assessments.

Tyrone, Brooks, Fayetteville,

Woolsey and the county all selected the East Fayetteville Bypass as the

top priority. Peachtree City officials, led by Mayor Steve Brown, believed

the grade separation at the intersection of Ga. highways 54 and 74 should

be the group's emphasis, followed by the Peachtree Parkway-Crosstown

Road intersection improvement and the widening of Hwy. 74 South from two

to four lanes.

Dunn agreed Peachtree City's

three choices were important, but pointed out the lion's share of

transportation improvements in the county during the last few years were

in Peachtree City, including the impending improvements of TDK Boulevard

and the widening of Hwy. 54 to the Coweta County line.

But in the end, the group dismissed

Brown's choices for the top three and set their priorities as the

East Fayetteville Bypass, the West Fayetteville Bypass and the widening

of Ga. Highway 54 east to the Clayton County border.

During Thursday's discussion,

finance director Mark Pulliam said if the county had started collecting

the extra tax this year, it would probably have generated $96 million

over the next five years.

But with the economy starting

to turn around, he thinks a "conservative" estimate for a SPLOST

starting in 2005 is $101 million.

Dunn emphasized that if the

commissioners called for the vote in November, their part of the process

would be complete.

In recent SPLOST elections

around the state, some officials have had their wrists slapped for ethical

violations in trying to get out the vote in support of the sales tax.

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