Critical Henry County traffic improvement vote in November! Traffic improvements will be on the ballot in November to unclog our streets. The alternative is unthinkable with 400,000 residents on two lane roads in Henry County for the foreseeable future in 2030 and beyond with 8000 new residents moving here yearly! A Henry County Transportation Splost or T-Splost will go on the ballot in November and if approved by voters road projects like widening Jonesboro Rd, Rock Quarry Rd, McDonough Pkwy, Bill Gardner Pkwy, and numerous others roads can be widened to 4 lanes improving traffic. Stockbridge would receive $30 million and McDonough $27 million for additional transporting improvements. The plan is solid prioritizing need in Henry. The T-Splost or 1 cent sales tax could also build a Silver Comet Trail like trail system throughout Henry County! The Stockbridge plan will support traffic improvements widening Rock Quarry Rd and then extending Rock Quarry Rd to East Atlanta Rd at Valley Hill Rd solving the East Atlanta Rd bottleneck at North Henry Blvd. The Stockbridge plan will also build an Atlanta Beltline like trail/sidewalk network throughout the city. If you want traffic improved Go Vote in November! Background information posted previously on T-Splost� �https://bwcatlantasouth.com/post/177031805131/stockbridge-approves-support-for-atl-regional (at Henry County, Georgia) Ariel Shaw DeRitha Marbory Barber Henry County (GA) Alumnae Chapter, Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. Wanda Anderson Walker Rita Bailey Cherice Hollis Benjamin Carter II Carlotta Harris Harrell Clayton Carte Susan O'Connor Cloutman Dometrice Dee Clemmons Eusebio Devon Phelps Sonya Flynn Yeadon Brandi Foley-Rodgers Sandra Givens Lily Jung Henson Henry County Chamber of Commerce Joseph Hennon Demetrious Blackmon Erica McCrae Mumtahanah Siddiqa Amrullah Gibson Yusuf Gaines Sundai Rain Sharon Jester-Ponder Kim Mays Kenya Simmons Kathryn Schwenger Pinky Willis Samantha Samuels Vivian Angelia Thomas Thomas White Timothy J. McBride Councilwoman Sandra Vincent Coylitia Williamson O'Neal
You might have noticed that the sales tax in Clarke County was recently increased from 7% to 8%. This made me curious about what the sales tax is actually used for. I was excited to find out that it not only funds educational projects in the school districts, but also keeps up and improves our roads and infrastructure, and is currently paying for the Oconee River Greenway and the Firefly Trail among many other projects. So everytime you buy something in ACC, you are contributing to these programs. That also means that the increase in online shopping means less funds for these important projects, so please shop local as much as possible! . . . . #athensga #acc #salestax #tsplostathens #tsplost #shoplocal #supportlocal #communityathens
If you look at where the congestion is, where red lines are, where traffic is frankly stopped, it’s all in or around the perimeter … That’s where I don’t believe this region will ever pass a regional SPLOST.
Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Tommie Williams said of the Senate’s new transportation plan
Other states invest in transportation while Georgia mostly stands still
Transportation for America, a Washington, D.C.-based organization pushing for 21st century transportation infrastructure improvements across the country, recently announced nineteen states have put forth plans — some have already failed to pass – to raise revenue for transportation projects.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley successfully lobbied the state’s General Assembly to pass a 20- cent increase to the gas tax phased in through year 2016. In the future, the gas tax will be indexed for inflation. Dubbed the Maryland Transportation Infrastructure Investment Act, the legislation will also impose a 3 percent sales tax on gasoline purchases. The two revenue models are expected to raise $4.4 billion over six years.
Others states that were able to effectively increase their gas tax for transportation infrastructure purposes include New Hampshire and Wyoming.
For some states, new transportations will be a dream deferred.
Last month in Mississippi, the Chair of the House Transportation Committee, a Democrat, introduced a bill to raise the state’s gas tax for highway funding. Additionally, a Republican in the State Senate introduced a bill to link casino winnings to the state’s highway fund. Both bills failed to make it out of committee.
The Indiana General Assembly introduced two bills, one would allow counties in the Indianapolis region to implement partial penny sales tax increases for expanding transit while the other would increase the gas tax to fund bridge repair and maintenance.
At an event in Detroit last week, former General Motors Vice Chair Robert Lutz remarked an increase in the gas tax is necessary to both reduce America’s addiction to oil and to fix the “unholy mess of this nation’s highway infrastructure”.
Additionally, the recent news the Obama Administration selected Anthony Foxx, Mayor of Charlotte, N.C., to replace Ray LaHood as U.S. Transportation Secretary bodes well for the South. We have seen the benefits of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s Washington, D.C. lobbying efforts for federal funding of the deepening of the Savannah Port.
Foxx as U.S. Transportation Secretary adds another arrow in the quiver for Reed’s transportation efforts.
Efforts to increase transportation spending must continue — in Georgia and across the country.
In metro Atlanta, we are continuing to pay a “congestion tax” as motorists remain in their vehicles without sustainable transportation options.
Unlike the aforementioned states, our General Assembly chose not to bring forth another transportation bill in the 2013 General Assembly nor is there talk of considering to do so next year.
Each year the State of Georgia turns a blind eye to the transportation infrastructure needs of the transit-centric urban core and rural roadway commuters, we will continue to fall behind competitor cities and states.
Sometimes I dream about downtown Atlanta. It's usually back when I was a kid. I was a Buckhead Boy and could board the No. 23 bus on Peachtree with a buddy and go downtown on a summer afternoon to watch movies in the vast, cool theaters that towered over Peachtree Street: the Loew's Grand, the Paramount, and the Roxy. At night, their marquees looked like Broadway. They're gone, of course, plowed under to make way for tall buildings and the car culture that carried residents onto new highways and into the suburbs.
I remember when Atlanta was alive with trains. When I went off to the University of Georgia in 1965, I could catch a passenger train at the old Emory station on Sunday night and ride it to Athens, drinking beer in the club car because they didn't ID. Ultimately, people went so crazy about cars that Atlanta demolished both downtown train stations, the Union and the Terminal, in the early '70s. The Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett called their destruction "acts of municipal vandalism."
Forty years ago, the South's great hippie scene, around 14th and Peachtree, was winding down with the end of the Vietnam War. The original Underground Atlanta entertainment district was still open. Back then, it was one of the craziest places on earth. It rivaled Bourbon Street. You could stagger from one great music-filled bar to another along gas-lit avenues lined by rough, ancient brick walls. Underground went under after a few years of glory. It was reborn later as a wannabe mall.
Four decades ago, the white people who fled to the suburbs to avoid integration voted against MARTA because they didn't want black people riding a train past the river. And here we sit. The suburbs voted against mass transit again this summer. Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution said the recent "No" vote on the transportation sales tax showed that Atlanta "firmly wants to be in the 1980s."
Time, however, doesn't move in that direction. Yet when it comes to transportation, few Atlantans are willing to consider any possible scenario other than what we've already got. Metro Atlanta has Balkanized. It is incapable of reaching a regional solution to the lunacy of a car-obsessed metropolis unwilling to deal with its traffic problems. State transportation policy has been controlled by the highway builders and real-estate developers who carved out the suburbs. The developers were like a looting party. They made their money. Now they're sipping toddies at Sea Island while their handiwork sheds value quicker than a copperhead loses skin.
For five years, I was the traffic columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the '90s. The job was sort of family-related: some of my ancestors, the Belle Isle Boys, were Atlanta's first auto mechanics.
I had an epiphany about traffic one morning while riding with Capt. Herb Emory in his WSB helicopter. We had just flown past I-285 going north along I-85. I couldn't see the end of the cars, inching along, bumper-to-bumper, backed all the way past Suwanee, each one sucking up a tank of gas. I thought, "This ain't gonna work." I could sense the fragility of the system. One big blip in the oil market and we're toast.
At some point, it just won't work anymore, and we'll have to do something different. Already, many of us sense that the American economy has become an utter sham, driven by massive fraud that's winked away because the investment bankers run the country the way road-builders and developers have run Georgia. There's not going to be any money for huge new transportation systems. While we might not be able to afford high-speed rail, we could certainly run passenger trains along existing lines. We could do that now, but the foot-draggers in the General Assembly are too stubborn.
I mean, why ride a train when you've got your own Ford F-150, right?
The people in the city proper will have transportation options that suburbanites won't, with the Beltline and other innovations. The city has MARTA, bless its heart. Plus, the city is attracting bright people who don't want to spend their lives in a car. They're trying to figure out how to buy locally grown food without trucking it from hell and gone. People are investing in the city and trying to make it better. Meanwhile, the conservatives in the suburbs are still living la vida loca in the 1980s.
My optimism about Atlanta's transportation future was beaten out of me long ago. I came away with one great hope: that one day I would be able to take the train to Athens again, like I did when I was 18. I don't know if I will live that long.
Why Some Georgians Approved a Transportation Sales Tax
Transportation wonks across the country last month watched with anticipation to see whether voters in the greater Atlanta region would approve a plan to add a 10-year, one-penny sales tax in order to fund nearly $8.5 billion in transportation projects.
By now, the narrative is well-known: the tax failed spectacularly, with 62.3 of voters saying "no." The vote drew the collective groans of members of the transportation community, who were forced to look inward and ask why their message didn't resonate with voters.
But anyone who sees the Atlanta vote as an indication that Americans won't pay for transportation should take a look beyond the state's capital city. Lost in much of the analysis about the failure of the tax hike in Atlanta -- and most of the state's other 12 transportation districts too -- was the fact that it actually passed in three of them.
In Region 7, where Augusta is the hub, the vote passed with 53.7 percent of the vote.
In Region 8, home to Columbus, it passed with 54.3 percent of the vote.
And in largely rural Region 9, located in the southeastern part of the state, it got 51.7 percent of the vote.
Governing wrote earlier this month about why the transportation didn't succeed in greater Atlanta. Experts were critical of the lengthy list of more than 150 projects included in a plan that some perceived as a "goodie bag." There were also questions about whether the spending would actually relieve congestion. And there were some of the classic battles between road and transit proponents.
But perhaps a more fruitful exercise would be to consider why it was a success in other parts of the state.
In Region 7 -- anchored by the city of Augusta and Richmond County -- Mayor Deke Copenhaver says officials who assembled the project list stuck to mostly nuts-and-bolts work like road resurfacing and widening. "(W)e didn't go with any of the major, sexy projects that would be a lightning rod for controversy."
Regional officials say a key reason the vote was succesful in the three regions was because the lists were kept relatively short. "'I think people got their hands around it," says Teresa Tomlinson, mayor of Columbus, which is a merged city with Muscogee County.
In Columbus' Region 8, there were only about two dozen projects, which some proponents say was manageable and could be easily conveyed to voters, unlike the list assembled for greater Atlanta.
Dave Wills, government relations director of the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, said the regions that passed the transportation tax are more rural and don't have sophisticated transit networks; as a result, there weren't hotly contested debates about the role of transit.
He also says in those areas, there was more of an understanding and appreciation for the economic impact that the transportation spending could have. The rural areas face economic challenges and recognize that spending on infrastructure could help their long-term prospects.
Additionally, many of the rural counties that approved the spending stood to gain much more funding as a result of the unique regional approach than if they had pursued their own individual one-cent sales taxes.
Under the system created by the state, 75 percent of the funds generated by the tax would go to a set of specific regional projects, while 25 percent would go back to the counties for more discretionary use on transportation work. And the formula used to re-allocate that money disproportiantely favored large counties with lots of roads and small populations. So it was easy to secure political support for the proposal in those places, Wills says.
He adds that the regions that supported the tax are more evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats than other parts of the state. "While these folks are not necessarily pro-tax, they're not as disposed to object to something simply on the basis of being another tax," Wills says.
One key difference between Atlanta and Columbus' Region 8 is the campaign for the tax was led largely by the private sector, and public officials were not vocal supporters. In Atlanta, on the other hand, Mayor Kasim Reed was one of the tax's biggest cheerleaders.
Mike Gaymon, president and CEO of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, said his group and other supported touted specific projects in certain neighborhoods as well as the funding that would be available for general road maintenance in the more rural counties.
He believes the vote succeeded specifically because elected officials weren't loudly pushing for a tax hike. "We didn't ask them to take a stand," Gaymon says. "We said 'if y'all would remain neutral, that would great.' Our campaign felt like we not did want the political involvement."
Tomlinson, the Columbus mayor, agreed that she and other politicians did not advocate for the plan. She said she took a more measured approach, outlining the pros and cons of the vote. On one hand, transportation funding would be useful, but on the other hand, the regional plan meant Columbus and Muscogee County would be "donors" subsidizing smaller counties.
But she disagreed with Gaymon's characterization of why that strategy worked. She explains that by being honest with the public -- and not making broad claims about economic development -- she and other elected officials gained credibility in the minds of voters. "I think the community didn't feel like anything was behind hidden or anything was being pushed down their throat," Tomlinson says.
Copenhaver, of Augusta and Richmond County, says the county has approved one-penny tax hikes in recent years to pay for a new library and a new judicial center. "People see these projects built on time and under budget," Derek says. "That certainly does create a level of confidence."
He says supporters of the tax touted it as a way to keep the area's economic momentum going. The region is poised to get a new Starbucks production facility, an expansion of a nuclear power plant, and a new National Security Agency facility. Voters wanted to see those sorts of successes continue, he said.
