It is official, a local TSPLOST will appear on the November ballot for Gilmer County.
Gilmer County commissioners officially voted to put the measure on the ballot at a meeting where many items were removed from the agenda, and Chair Charlie Paris called in to participate.
A Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax is a 1 cent sales tax which will be dedicated to transportation needs in the county. The added cent would bring the county sales tax to 8 cents on the dollar. It would last for five years.
“Everybody in the county wants their road paved, I don’t think anybody wants to pay for it,” said Paris when he proposed the TSPLOST at the May meeting. “The requests that I am getting both to pave roads and repave roads and to bring roads into the system which are not in the county system used to be very polite. Folks are getting very aggressive now.”
Leaders of the county and Ellijay and East Ellijay agreed to a split of the revenue. If passed, Ellijay Mayor Al Hoyle agreed to take a 6 percent stake of the TSPLOST, and East Ellijay Mayor Don Callihan agreed to a 3.5 percent share, leaving 90.5 percent to the county.
Paris said it will take Gilmer County an estimated 50 years to make sure all 503 miles of roads maintained by the county are paved. He said the TSPLOST could allow the county to perform the same paving in an estimated 10 years.
Another reason he wants to enact a local TSPLOST is to exempt the county from any possible regional TSPLOST.
“Just be proactive and do the local TSPLOST and get ourselves out of any threat of finding ourselves in a regional TSPLOST,” he said.
Paris is opposed to a regional TSPLOST. He said he feels it would take money out of the county and send it to larger counties for paving.
“This would be the absolute least harmful, if you will, means of raising the funds necessary to get the roads back in to good shape,” Paris said.
Much of the sales tax would be paid by visitors to the county, he said.
Several items would be exempt from a local TSPLOST including fuel, certain categories of groceries and prescription drugs.
Gilmer County residents will vote on the TSPLOST on the November ballot.
A special called meeting will be held in the future to finalize the project list for the TSPLOST.
Other business
In other business commissioners:
﹣ hired Sharon Courson as the new emergency management director for the county.
﹣ saluted outgoing EMA director Keith Kucera.
﹣ expanded the Keep Gilmer Beautiful board to seven members by adding Jim Smith. They reappointed Terrill Carlson and Jim Cole.
﹣ appointed Betsy Sheppard to the county ethics board to fill seat left open by Lex Rainey.
﹣ reappointed Mark Hice to the building authority.