More Than 1,000 Place Early SPLOST Vote

As of Friday morning, 1,315 voters in Cobb County had cast their early ballots on the new Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.

That number includes residents who have requested mail-in ballots and those who have brought in ballots, election officials said.

As of Feb. 1, there were 392,355 registered voters in the county.

Early voting on SPLOST started Monday and ends March 11. The actual vote is March 15.

If approved by voters, the special four-year tax would begin Jan. 1, 2012, just as the current one ends.

The new one-cent-on-the-dollar tax is projected to generate $492 million for parks, recreation and transportation maintenance projects.

A SPLOST forum was held Wednesday evening with about 130 residents present.

Arguments for SPLOST were presented by Rose Wing with Citizens for Cobb’s Future, while Lance Lamberton, president of the Cobb County Taxpayers Association, gave the opposing view.

Wing said that, if approved, SPLOST would insure that Cobb County continued to be competitive when seeking businesses to locate in the area. If the SPLOST was to fail on March 15, the county would incur debt, she added, and it could threaten the county’s Triple A bond rating.

Lamberton said that the list of projects was more of a “want” list than a “need” list. The county needs to take a more conservative look at the current budget and see what can be cut, he said. In the down economy, county commissioners need to be thinking more about cutting taxes than adding more, Lamberton said.