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Photo by Arnaud Jaegers
Hart County will “continue the penny,” as voters renewed a one-percent sales tax county-wide specifically to be used for education, during Tuesday’s Election Day.
The tax, known as ESPLOST VI (Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax), passed with 1,337 votes for the tax, while 526 voters voted in opposition.
ESPLOST VI will allow the school system to continue collecting the tax for a sixth time, as the first edition was passed in 1999.
“On behalf of the Hart County Board of Education and the approximately 3,700 children we serve each day, I want to thank the Hart County community for supporting the ESPLOST,” Hart County Superintendent Jennifer Carter said in a statement released by the system. “Nothing is more important to us than serving the children of this community.”
Board of Education chair Kim Pierce echoed the sentiment.
“I want to thank the citizens of the community for turning out to vote, especially since it was a special election and the only thing on the ballot,” Pierce said.
The total 1,863 votes comes in at just over 10 percent of all 17,518 registered voters in the county, with most of the turnout coming through early voting.
Advanced votes made up 1,108 of the total 1,863 votes with 814 advanced votes for ESPLOST VI and 294 votes against it.
Election Day voters marked a closer split, with 503 of the 719 votes cast on Tuesday being in favor of ESPLOST VI while 216 votes were cast in opposition of on Election Day.
The final tally also included 36 absentee votes by mail, with 20 absentee votes going in favor of ESPLOST VI and 16 votes going against it.
Carter told The Hartwell Sun that she was almost surprised that the vote was not closer.
“I just don’t remember it being that high,” she said. “I hate to say it surprised us, but I think it really did. We thought it might be closer than that and we were very pleased with [the results].”
The vote allows for the collection of up to $30.58 million over the next five years, starting whenever the current ESPLOST V reaches its cap of $18 million. Last week, The Hartwell Sun reported that school officials are projecting ESPLOST V to reach its cap by September, according to Associate Superintendent Brooks Mewborn.
“The funds raised through the new ESPLOST [VI] will be used to provide the best educational opportunities for each child in Hart County,” Carter said in the statement. “Thank you, Hart County, for your continued support of the school system and for making our children your top priority.”
School officials have said that the first priority with the funds is to take on an expansion project of the Hart County High School campus that will provide additional parking for student drivers by relocating the system’s transportation maintenance facility to newly purchased property off of Bowman Road and using the freed up space to expand.
Mewborn is looking to start that project immediately, but the legal process causes the timeline to run a bit slower.
“I know I’d made the comment that we’d like to start Wednesday and I was not kidding about that, but it doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a process that you have to go through. It does take a little time to get the ball rolling because there’s things that you have to do by law that require you to go through the Georgia Procurement website, it has to sit for 30 days and you have to wait for people to put bids in and then you have to open up the bid packages and present them to your board, and you have to do that for every project that you do.”
With the passing of ESPLOST VI, voters also elected to approve the issuance of a $7 million bond, which school officials said allows them to start the projects instantly instead of waiting for the collections to begin later in the year.
“We will have to go through that bonding process because we won’t be able to spend ESPLOST VI money until we start collecting, which could be potentially September,” Mewborn said. “So we have to get that secured first, but then after you do that, you start looking at the projects that you’ve told the people that you want to proceed with.”
Carter said they would be starting those meetings to begin the bond process immediately.
“That next step will be working through that bonding of funds and getting guidance on how to do that and what we do next with that,” Carter told The Hartwell Sun. “I anticipate talking with the people who are experts in that today and moving forward.”
As for when people will begin to see ground moving outside, Carter said she “doesn’t feel comfortable” projecting a timeline.
“Obviously we want it to be sooner rather than later,” she said. “But I hate to put a projected timeline out there and then miss the mark….Our goal will be to be just as quick as the law allows and then also just as quick as the people that are going to do the work can get to the work.”
Other projects included in the ESPLOST VI include renovations to North Hart Elementary and South Hart Elementary, a new field house located beside the HCHS football field, a daycare facility which would provide childcare primarily to school system employees as well as other children in the community and a new “professional learning building” which will contain the superintendent and other administration offices for the system.
Pierce said that of the ESPLOST VI plans, the one that excites her the most is the potential daycare facility that would take over the current Board of Education building.
“With new individuals moving into our community there’s a lack of childcare available, so to be able to hire and retain the best employees, this is something we’re excited to provide,” Pierce said.
The one-percent sales tax collections from ESPLOST VI are set to continue until the new $30.58 million cap is met, or the 60-month collection period is complete, whichever happens first.