There were no surprises in voting on tax measures in Coastal Georgia on this Election Day.
Voters in Coastal Georgia counties demonstrated again on Tuesday their (and their elected representatives) aversion to property-tax hikes and their hearty embrace of any alternatives to them.
By an average of 22% of the ballots cast, voters in Chatham, Liberty and McIntosh decisively approved multiyear extensions of a one-cent sales tax to fund infrastructure projects in their counties.
- In Chatham, revenues from the special-purpose option sales tax, or SPLOST, will be used, among other things, to expand the juvenile court facility ($40 million), eliminate the railroad crossing on President Street near its intersection with Truman Parkway ($25 million), upgrade the county’s emergency communications system ($11 million), and to upgrade the Airways Avenue at I-95 interchange ($6 million.)
- In Liberty, some $87.6 million in anticipated revenues from the renewal of the transportation special option sales tax, or TSPLOST, are slated to be used for upgrades to Islands Highway, Charles Frasier Boulevard, and the Hinesville 84 bypass.
- In McIntosh, TSPLOST revenues are to fund improvements on Blues Reach/Holland Cemetery Road ($502,620), Steele Bridge Road ($347,530) and Franklin Street ($199,381).
Voting on tax measures hasn’t always been so emphatic.
In March, Bryan County voters, by a margin of just 35 ballots, rejected a one-cent tax to improve the county’s public-school infrastructure, known formally as an educational special purpose local option sales tax, or ESPLOST.
‘Negative impacts’
As for property-tax relief for homeowners, by an average of 32%, voters in Bryan and Liberty approved a one-cent sales tax to reduce local property tax bills. The option of levying the so-called floating option sales tax, or FLOST, was extended to Georgia’s 159 counties in a bill passed last year.
In a similar measure, voters in Bryan, Chatham and Glynn, backed, by an average of 28%, a ballot proposition that caps the annual assessment increase for school property taxes at the rate of inflation.
Without opposing the proposition outright, the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System had cautioned against any measure that “could have negative impacts on the educational services provided to the children of Chatham County.”
Local property taxes accounted for approximately 37% of total public-school funding in Georgia in FY 2022, according to the Georgia Budget Policy Institute.