There will be one less item on the general election ballot for Cobb voters in November.
Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said last week that she is delaying a referendum on the Cobb Mobility SPLOST until at least 2024 after meetings in recent months with community stakeholders.
She had been proposing a one-percent special-purpose local-option sales tax to fund transit and surface transportation projects.
But she and the mayors of Cobb six cities could not come to an agreement on how much money to raise from the tax and how long to levy it. There also wasn’t enough support from the other four commissioners to put a referendum on the November ballot.
“I can’t put this on the ballot myself,” Cupid said in a statement issued by the county. “This is a team effort and these conversations convinced me we can get more support for a transit referendum after putting in more intentional effort and planning over the next few years.”
She said she wanted to put the matter on the ballot this year because federal matching funds were available, but noted in the county release that similar referendums in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties may be proposed in 2024.
The Mobility SPLOST is separate from the Cobb general government SPLOST that funds road projects, facility construction and maintenance and purchase of park land.
You can view a county presentation on the Mobility SPLOST by clicking here; more information can be found here.
Cobb voters in November voted to continue that tax for another six years.
Roughly half of that amount is to go to road projects. Under state law, local governments have the option to collect a special mobility sales tax.
Last fall, Cupid and Cobb commissioners held town halls around the county to gauge public interest in a Mobility SPLOST.
Cobb residents also pay a one-percent sales tax for school construction and maintenance projects in the Cobb and Marietta school districts, and last year also voted to extend that tax for another five years, starting in 2024.
Related:
Cobb approves projects for $31.8M with excess SPLOST funds
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Glad it’s not going to be on the ballot.
Voting for high taxes, high prices, less take home money, and living in poverty has been trending ever since I moved here.
I think they saw some polling that told them that it would not pass, so they are punting until a time that they hope that they can get this through. I don’t believe for a second that they would allow this to get on the ballot if they thought that there was a chance that it would blow up in their faces the way the T-SPLOST blew up in Tim Lee’s.
There may be some confusion here. There are TWO proposals for consideration.
One proposal is for a 1% additional sales tax for “mobility” that would fund bike lanes, trails, streetscaping and maybe even some transportation improvements. Revenue from this tax would be shared with Cobb cities and would run for five years.
The second proposal is a 1% additional sales tax for MASS TRANSIT. Revenue from this tax would go exclusively to the county. This tax would be collected for THIRTY years.