Gwinnett Daily Post | County SPLOST renewal up for a vote

Between her daughter’s soccer games and her son’s cross country meets, Paige Havens has probably visited every park in Gwinnett County in recent years.

And she’s crossed a lot of roads to get there.

Add on the police and paramedics ready for an emergency if she needs them and the libraries filled with books for the next school project, and the Havens family is surrounded by the infrastructure built over more than two decades by county sales tax dollars.

“Everywhere I turn I am touched by those SPLOST dollars,” Havens said of the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, which has been a part of the county’s funding mechanism for nearly all of the 25 years she has lived in Gwinnett. “It has truly impacted our family’s quality of life.”

With a proposed renewal of the 1 percent sales tax on Nov. 5 ballots, the marketing maven volunteered to campaign for the tax, which is the only matter on countywide ballots this fall.

“I am constantly reminded, almost daily,” of the benefits, Haven said. “Anything that can help offset my propert taxes I’m all for.”

But for Steve Ramey, any tax is a bad tax.

The co-founder of the Gwinnett Tea Party has watched the county government propose the sales tax a couple of times a decade for 25 years and he’s never voted yes.

“I can’t imagine me wanting to pay more taxes. We are taxed to death,” Ramey said.

“It’s not really special anymore,” he added, pointing out that the Legislature allowed the provision for a short term, pointing out within its very name that it is for a “special purpose.”

But in Gwinnett — and many other places in metro Atlanta — the tax has become a part of the usual tax code. It has been collected constantly since 1988, with the exception of one year in the mid ’90s when voters rejected the ballot measure giving all of the funding toward transportation. When officials proposed an allocation the next year that spread the money over parks, libraries and police and fire stations and equipment as well as road funding, voters allowed the tax to return.

via Gwinnett Daily Post | County SPLOST renewal up for a vote.