Cobb County’s March 15 SPLOST Vote: Deception #4
by PV
Deception #4: Just like in the movie Charade, no one is ever telling you the whole story…
Here’s the “rest of the story:” Within the next 15 months, Cobb County voters will be asked to vote on 2 additional 1% SPLOSTs completely unrelated to this 1% Cobb County SPLOST vote on March 15th.
One of those 1% elections will be to renew or decline the renewal of the first 1% on our 6% sales tax rate: The School Board SPLOST.
The OTHER 1% SPLOST vote will be what’s called the “T-SPLOST.” This is a vote that will include the 10-county region of the metro-Atlanta area.
A “T-SPLOST” stands for a “Transportation SPLOST.” The purpose of this tax is to raise money to deal with regional transportation issues. Everyone in the 10 county region will be asked to vote to add 1% to all of their county sales tax rates. Cobb County is one of those counties in the 10-county mix.
PV is dubbing this 2012 T-SPLOST as the Regional Atlanta Transportation SPLOST…or, R.A.T.S. for short.
Now, here’s the kicker for anyone who is a supporter of the passage of RATS: If you want RATS to have the BEST chance of passing, you will hope that votes like this Cobb SPLOST vote on March 15th fails.
Because there ain’t no freaking way that if this March 15th SPLOST passes AND the county raises the millage rates anyway (as PV predicts with 99.9999% certainty they will have to do) that Cobb County’s voters are going to vote in favor of RATS.
AND…the voters in the surrounding counties will also see what happened in Cobb when the commission promised one thing, but had to raise millage rates anyway, and they will vote against RATS as well.
