How should city of Atlanta spend its 15% of the TSPLOST? (Sandy Springs: sales, unemployment)

[K-SawDude]

Great piece updating where city leaders are planning to spend 15% of the taxes collected for the TSPLOST:

City of Atlanta develops plan for spending its 15 percent of region’s transportation tax | SaportaReport

Weyandt said the city is considering spending its funds in three different ways.

The first category (roughly $4 million a year,) would be for “high-profile” projects — major city roadways, such as DeKalb Avenue, Cascade Road, Fairburn Road, Flat Shoals Avenue, Lenox Road, Monroe Dr., West Paces Ferry Road, to name a few possible corridors.
Weyandt said the corridor improvements could include pavement resurfacing, sidewalk repair and installation, streetscape improvements, lighting, bicycle facilities, pedestrian crossings, on-street parking and transit amenities. . . .

The second category will be to distribute about $3.2 million a year among the city’s individual 12 City Council districts. Each council district would get about $265,000 a year to put in their communities. Again, all the selected projects would come from the city’s already approved transportation plan. . . .

The third category could be referred to as opportunistic reserves. As proposed by Weyandt, who is working on behalf of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, the city would plan to set aside at least $1 million a year that it could use as a local match for federal or state transportation projects.

It also looks like they're looking for public feedback on what to do with these monies. Public hearings will be held here:


Session 1: Southeast Quadrant
Monday, February 27, 2012 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (presentations at 6:00pm and 7:00pm)
Ford Conservation Room & Eco Hall, Zoo Atlanta, 800 Cherokee Ave SE, Atlanta, GA 30315
Accessible via MARTA bus routes 32 & 49.
Session 2: Southwest Quadrant
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (presentations at 6:00pm and 7:00pm)
Cascade United Methodist Church, 3144 Cascade Rd SW, Atlanta, GA 30311
Accessible via MARTA bus routes 66 & 71.
Session 3: Northeast Quadrant
Thursday, March 1, 2012 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (presentations at 6:00pm and 7:00pm)
Atrium, MARTA Headquarters, 2424 Piedmont Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30324
Accessible via MARTA Gold & Red Lines and bus routes 5, 6, 27, 30 and 39.
Session 4: Northwest Quadrant
Monday, March 5, 2012 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (presentations at 6:00pm and 7:00pm)
Carpenter’s House, Atlanta Mission, 2353 Bolton Rd NW, Atlanta, GA 30318
Accessible via MARTA bus route 60.

(BTW, anyone else think it's kind of crappy that the city is just now advertising these briefings, and at least one of them already occurred yesterday?)

[neil0311]

I thought they were required to spend it on the earmarked projects, as people have said, "for the benefit of us all?" Hmmm....so the City of Atlanta can dedicate it's money to specific projects that specifically benefit the citizens of Atlanta, not the brotherhood of man?

So, it's OK for Atlanta to do this (and I don't disagree) but if Cobb or another county wants to do the same, then it's just selfish and shortsighted suburbanites not chipping in for the common good?

[BeyondInfinity]

Originally Posted by neil0311

I thought they were required to spend it on the earmarked projects, as people have said, "for the benefit of us all?" Hmmm....so the City of Atlanta can dedicate it's money to specific projects that specifically benefit the citizens of Atlanta, not the brotherhood of man?

So, it's OK for Atlanta to do this (and I don't disagree) but if Cobb or another county wants to do the same, then it's just selfish and shortsighted suburbanites not chipping in for the common good?

Did you even bother to read the article? Obviously not because then you would have read the first three paragraphs which answer your questions.

From the the article:

"When metro Atlanta voters go to the polls on July 31 to vote on a one-penny regional sales tax for transportation for the next 10 years, they will be voting for two pots of money.
One pot — $6.14 billion (or 85 percent of what would be collected) — would go to a list a projects approved by the Atlanta Regional Roundtable, of which 52 percent will go towards transit projects.
The other pot is for the remaining 15 percent, which would total about $1.1 billion, would be distributed to the region’s local governments to spend on their own transportation projects.
For the City of Atlanta, it is estimated that 15 percent of the tax would translate into about $95 million over 10 years, or about $9.5 million a year."

[Craziaskowboi]

Originally Posted by K-SawDude

Great piece updating where city leaders are planning to spend 15% of the taxes collected for the TSPLOST:

I was thinking strippers and champagne, but whatever.

[cqholt]

I think the outline the City of Atlanta has set aside works great. It fixes major corridors that all metro area resident use, while giving money to each council district to use as they seem necessary. I'm sure the NPU's will have a lot of input on how the money for each district is spent.

So, it's OK for Atlanta to do this (and I don't disagree) but if Cobb or another county wants to do the same, then it's just selfish and shortsighted suburbanites not chipping in for the common good?

Read the article before you jump to conclusions, typical Cobb resident.

[K-SawDude]

Originally Posted by neil0311

I thought they were required to spend it on the earmarked projects, as people have said, "for the benefit of us all?" Hmmm....so the City of Atlanta can dedicate it's money to specific projects that specifically benefit the citizens of Atlanta, not the brotherhood of man?

So, it's OK for Atlanta to do this (and I don't disagree) but if Cobb or another county wants to do the same, then it's just selfish and shortsighted suburbanites not chipping in for the common good?

Others above have alluded to this, but the 15% portion is more of what you wanted to see from the TSPLOST in the first place. In each region, including Cobb County, 15% is reserved for local projects to be determined by local leaders.

Now, you may ask, why isn't all 100% done this way? Because the 85% is targeting projects that are extra-local--meaning, it's putting money into a pool to address transit needs that span multiple locales and counties. This has got to be done somehow, even if individual proposals aren't necessarily what any one individual wants to do. (Realistically, no one person is going to like nor personally benefit from all projects. And that's not really the point, anyway. It's about regional improvement.)

[bu2]

What a waste. Not a dime to actually improve the flow of traffic.

I'm very opposed to paying extra taxes for basic maintenance such as re-paving.

Here's what they ought to do:
#1 Synchronize lights. I drove one Saturday down Roswell from 285 in Sandy Springs to Atlanta without stopping for a red light. In Atlanta, if the lights are even functioning, the idea seems to be to keep you from getting where you want to go.
#2 Improve traffic flow with things like extra or longer left turn lanes and eliminating left turns.
#3 Major maintenance projects such as bridge replacements.
#4 Widening certain arterial streets and improving intersections, perhaps connecting streets to improve traffic flow.

A transportation expert rated Atlanta 19th of the 20 largest metro areas is its arterial street network. He described it as a bunch of winding country roads with no left turn lanes. Many of the leaders want greater density in Atlanta but somehow magically think cars will go away. Atlanta's roads can't handle 3% unemployment, let alone more people. Transit carries 4% of the population. Even if 50% of net new arrivals used mass transit (a ridiculously high figure), that would mean 50% more cars and the system would shut down.

[cqholt]

A transportation expert rated Atlanta 19th of the 20 largest metro areas is its arterial street network.

Your exactly correct. The surface street system is horrible because GDOT felt it was better to heavily invest in the interstate system, than offer surface streets as another option. The TSPLOST is a way for us to vote on metro wide projects and also have local jurisdictions improve the surface streets.

What a waste. Not a dime to actually improve the flow of traffic.

How is improving the 285/20, 285/400, and 285/85 interchanges not going to improve the flow of traffic, not just for locals, but tourists and truck traffic? The transit projects give people other commuting options.

[atltechdude]

Originally Posted by bu2

What a waste. Not a dime to actually improve the flow of traffic.

I'm very opposed to paying extra taxes for basic maintenance such as re-paving.

Here's what they ought to do:
#1 Synchronize lights. I drove one Saturday down Roswell from 285 in Sandy Springs to Atlanta without stopping for a red light. In Atlanta, if the lights are even functioning, the idea seems to be to keep you from getting where you want to go.
#2 Improve traffic flow with things like extra or longer left turn lanes and eliminating left turns.
#3 Major maintenance projects such as bridge replacements.
#4 Widening certain arterial streets and improving intersections, perhaps connecting streets to improve traffic flow.

Many of the items on the project list are widening of surface streets, which will improve traffic flow.

http://www.ajc.com/multimedia/archive/01160/PDF__Final_project_1160778a.pdf (broken link)

Download the pdf and do a search for how many times the word 'widening' is used.

[ATLTJL]

Read the article before you jump to conclusions, typical Cobb resident.

Seriously, man, you need to look into having that chip on your shoulder removed.

I have no dog in this fight, and I don't really care....

But even if I disagreed with what you said, I don't think I would ever cap my argument off with "typical Kirkwood resident."

I don't mean to be rude, but you need to check yourself.