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A couple of questions that I have been unable to find the answers to reading about this:
1) Where, exactly, will the penny tax be enacted? It sounds like metro Atlanta, but what defines metro Atlanta? Is it just Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties? What are the boundaries of where the tax will be?
2) I read that $500 million of the money going to MARTA will be used to pay off debt that MARTA has already accrued. Is this true?
This is the best source of information. It is very transparent and lists every project, although I must admit sometimes you have to know all of the regional and county planning documents and strategies to fully understand every purpose.
1) The state legislature split Georgia into a bunch of different districts. Each district creates its own lists and each district will vote to pass the tax or not. They even built in a penalty from some GDOT funds if the region doesn't pass the tax. The legislature means this as a way to help fill the gap in funding created from decreasing other taxes in the past.... but more on that when/if we come to it.
The Atlanta district includes 10 counties: Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale counties.
There are some counties from the Metro region that are in other smaller neighboring regions. Most notably Forsyth and Hall county is left out despite strong commuting connections with North Fulton and Gwinnett.
2) There are no projects that fund any debt at MARTA has accrued!! That is false. None of this is designed to save MARTA from their management of operations costs or current debt. (I could be wrong, but I think it is actually written into the law that it can't. I think the legislature singled out MARTA for this. GRTA bus operations, some Gwinnett and Cobb bus operations, and most notably the operations of the Clayton system are included.)
However, MARTA does get two types of things in the package:
1- Any new corridor under their management, the Emory/Clifton corridor for example, the capitol and operations expenses of the new corridor are included. 2- MARTA has provisions to get money for capitol costs on upgrades to tunnels, ventilation, bridges, elevator maintenance, new facade at the airport MARTA station, communication systems, etc... These are expenses MARTA would eventually need to make as capitol expenditures, as well as some improvements to the existing system. I didn't total it all up, but it does come to around $500m and this is probably what you heard about, but it is incorrect to say this is debt already accrued. It might be fair to say that this is capital expenses that haven't been financed in the past, present, and future.
It is marked on the fact sheets as Project: TI-M-001 through TI-M014 (pages 143-154 at this link:http://www.atlantaregionalroundtable...Resolution.pdf).
FYI:
That website provides maps and fact sheets for every subregion within the Atlanta region. It has the final list of all projects, as well as the report they had to put together about all of the projects.
Last edited by cwkimbro; 02-11-2012 at 12:16 AM..
Reason: small typo
I live close enough to Forsyth county to go there for big ticket items. I'm positive they will defeat it.
Personally, I don't feel the need to subsidize MARTA unless it is going to come up I-85 to Gwinnett Arena. What they should have done was gotten rail on the Gwinnett county ballot during midterm elections so it could get approved and then this money could have been used to help fund a new spur going there.
I know traffic on Clifton is horrible, but that spur would benefit a pretty small percentage of people. I'm sure the people who use it would really appreciate it, though.
I don't know, I may vote for it. After all, 10 years isn't really that long of a time to have a penny tax. I paid the 8% taxes in Atlanta for years and didn't really notice when I came to Gwinnett and paid the lower taxes here.
It's kind of a small bill, though. I'd rather have them pass a nickel tax and expand MARTA all over the suburbs and modernize the thing with newer trains and express routes that go 10 miles or so between stops like the NY subway has. Then we could just pay for it, build it, and be done with it.
A penny isn't much, but the projects on the list probably won't do very much to help either. I think that's a negative because then in 2022 when they try to get it renewed, it will never fly because the counter argument will be you've been paying this for 10 years and what have they done with it? So maybe we ought to vote no and let them go revamp it with a plan that might actually work in 2014.
I live close enough to Forsyth county to go there for big ticket items. I'm positive they will defeat it.
Personally, I don't feel the need to subsidize MARTA unless it is going to come up I-85 to Gwinnett Arena. What they should have done was gotten rail on the Gwinnett county ballot during midterm elections so it could get approved and then this money could have been used to help fund a new spur going there.
I know traffic on Clifton is horrible, but that spur would benefit a pretty small percentage of people. I'm sure the people who use it would really appreciate it, though.
I don't know, I may vote for it. After all, 10 years isn't really that long of a time to have a penny tax. I paid the 8% taxes in Atlanta for years and didn't really notice when I came to Gwinnett and paid the lower taxes here.
It's kind of a small bill, though. I'd rather have them pass a nickel tax and expand MARTA all over the suburbs and modernize the thing with newer trains and express routes that go 10 miles or so between stops like the NY subway has. Then we could just pay for it, build it, and be done with it.
A penny isn't much, but the projects on the list probably won't do very much to help either. I think that's a negative because then in 2022 when they try to get it renewed, it will never fly because the counter argument will be you've been paying this for 10 years and what have they done with it? So maybe we ought to vote no and let them go revamp it with a plan that might actually work in 2014.
It's a tricky situation for sure.
Well you gotta start somewhere... 1-cent is better than 0-cent. Realistically they would look at other type of taxes before a 5-cent sales tax.
The other issues to consider... This is just years 1-10... This can come back again and again... If you look at the Concept 3 plan for the region... It is a 30-40 year vision. It is hard to wait a long time, but these things are expensive enough that it can't be done all at once.
The reason MARTA is getting those capitol improvements is because they have to happen first. If we expand in more directions in the future, then it becomes even more crucial to have a core system that runs smoothly and doesn't require to be single-tracked as often.
Anyways, for what it is worth... there are two details I think I will share:
1) I don't think the whole region is subsidizing MARTA in this tax nessecarily. That cost represents 1/14th the total amount of the 85% allocated to the regional list (15% goes straight to the county and cities). I think in large part... that is apart of Fulton and Dekalb's full share. I think we have to stop looking for where money is going around the region we don't like and realize it has to be devied up, because different parts of the region are paying the tax. I get tired of some of the in-towners that complain they aren't getting their fair share with this being their second tax, but I just see that funding as part of their fair share.
I know I'm in Gwinnett and I think we are getting a good deal, but in some very different ways, which brings me to my second point.
2) You mentioned being near Forsyth and an interest of rail in Gwinnett: This made me think of two very important things to consider:
a) Gwinnett still has alot of core roads that have yet to be fully built, especially in the Suwannee/buford area. Much of the funding Gwinnett is getting is going strongly towards better connecting Forsyth, West Gwinnett, and John's Creek. This is significant, because of the amount of workers and jobs that we are sharing. Not to mention how high they pay. That is not something we want to stall out in the next 10 years.
b) They actually did consider rail in Gwinnett. The major reason they didn't want to include it was simply... with full funding they couldn't deliver it within 10 years (and they would create a new list, new tax, and new vote w/o that piece up and running... imagine the rhetoric). The reason is while their have been general low-budget concept studies...nothing has been engineered, there are no federal applications for aid, no environmental assessments for those applications, etc... All of the basic low-budget things governments do way ahead of time to start a major project have not been done.
Gwinnett's portion of the money includes a small amount for this corridor to accomplish all of that. It will finish off the preferred alternative analysis, the environmental assessment, and the engineering. It will also protect some right of way from development that would make the corridor more expensive to build in the future.
I mention this, because it doesn't sound sexy to people and is often frustrating, because we won't see results for a long time. However, it is an important piece of funding so the next time we have this vote or the next time the legislature decides to raise a tax for transportation, we will be able to say... we have a project.. we can have it built and running in 5 years with full funding. If we don't pass this tax... and later do another one... It will still be that long of a project after waiting to raise the revenue from taxes and do all of the preliminary work.
The TSPLOST actually does this on 5 different corridors. If the federal government ever puts more money into transit or if we do this tax again in 10 years, we will be ready to hit the ground running (even if only 50% of the tax goes towards transit).
But anyways... I definitely understand your concerns. I just worry where will be without this tax. I see everything on it as good and necessary, but it just isn't enough all around.... but I can't use that to justify being against it either.
Anytime you post an opinion something on a thread on the internets you should expect to be responded to. In my opinion, a person who doesn't want a response to his/her post is a person who knows that their opinion stands on shaky ground and that they do not have the ability to defend their opinion against a more rigorous form of scrutiny.
I certainly hope that you are not one of those type of people. We have more than enough of those kind here in Georgia; and to me, those folks, even moreso than the "academics" are the ones who refuse to allow Atlanta to advance past the first grade.
Just my my two cents on the matter, whether you wanted it or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cityfilms
It's almost like having to teach first grade for your whole life. Even today all I hear the Ajc, people in this forum, or the regional commission talk about is "how atlanta needs to change and work together". It's almost like the region keeps failing first grade over and over and over again. I don't even mind the politics of the road building system, at least they get stuff done. The "academics" who run the regional commission are just plain incompetent. I'm just going to go ahead and speak my opinion here. I think the problem is Georgia Tech is not a good school for this sort of thing, and too many graduates from that school run things. I'd prefer nobody respond to this opinion or try to fight me on it. I've worked with some of these people and my opinion is based on working history, and yes, possibly bitter. Please just respect my opinion and don't throw academic rankings at me. A big issue with Atlanta, and as proven by some of the responses in this forum, is that the citizens allow these academics from GA tech control things, and these people claim that they are the experts and the only ones who should make these decisions.
It's almost like having to teach first grade for your whole life. Even today all I hear the Ajc, people in this forum, or the regional commission talk about is "how atlanta needs to change and work together". It's almost like the region keeps failing first grade over and over and over again. I don't even mind the politics of the road building system, at least they get stuff done. The "academics" who run the regional commission are just plain incompetent. I'm just going to go ahead and speak my opinion here. I think the problem is Georgia Tech is not a good school for this sort of thing, and too many graduates from that school run things. I'd prefer nobody respond to this opinion or try to fight me on it. I've worked with some of these people and my opinion is based on working history, and yes, possibly bitter. Please just respect my opinion and don't throw academic rankings at me. A big issue with Atlanta, and as proven by some of the responses in this forum, is that the citizens allow these academics from GA tech control things, and these people claim that they are the experts and the only ones who should make these decisions.
Based on the poor design of roads, poor planning, the incoherent contradictory choices that get made (traffic calming measures on highways when you are trying to improve traffic flow), the choices of criteria on projects, I was thinking the same thing about GT grads. Maybe we should import some Texas A&M grads. We definitely need serious change at the GDOT and ARC.
In a blow to hopes for Atlanta regional mass transit, a blueprint for a regional transit agency was finally introduced in the General Assembly this week after more than a year of work -- and immediately condemned Friday as so thorny that it probably will not come up for a vote this session.
The big question now is what that means for the 10-county $6.14 billion transportation referendum scheduled for July 31...
Simmering opposition in south DeKalb County to the proposed regional transportation sales tax is heating up, posing another challenge to backers of this summer’s referendum...
An increased gas tax would be a better option...the more you drive, the more you pay. About as fair as it gets.
I agree completely, but sadly there isn't much political opportunity to make this happen. We have been reducing this part of the tax.
We would still need a way to properly fund things like rail extensions... and hopefully commuter rail eventually. It takes cars off the road that tend to travel the longer distances.
An increased gas tax would be a better option...the more you drive, the more you pay. About as fair as it gets.
How is it fair if there aren't any viable alternatives? You wana charge people for something they have to do?
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