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Health & Fitness

Weighing TSPLOST from Both Sides

This will inaugurate the first in a series about the impending July vote by citizens of Cobb and other counties on whether to pay an extra 1 percent sales tax.

This will inaugurate the first in a series about the impending July vote by citizens of Cobb and other counties on whether to pay an extra 1% sales tax. The tax is supposed to be going for "people movers" or mass transit to alleviate the traffic problems in the region.

But will the plan do so? Is the plan for the above or for economic development? Who will gain and at what eventual cost?

From June on you will be barraged with phone calls, surveys, mail and radio urging you to vote for this plan. You will hear little from the opposition except maybe in newspapers like the MDJ.

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I plan to offer both sides of this issue. My sources will include the Cobb County DOT and others that will favor the plan to pass the tax. There have been meetings upon meetings discussing this subject.

Most of them have been under the auspices of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) that favors the transit plan and of course tax. On the other side I will talk with opponents such as the Georgia Tea Party and others who I can find.

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There are many questions that need to be addressed such as:

  • How long will it take for the light rail project (LRT) to be up and going?
  • Where will the trains go? How much will they cost?
  • What other elements are in the plan?
  • How does all of this affect the greater Powder Springs-West Cobb area?
  • Who favors what and why?
  • What are the long term affects (10 years+)?

There is lots of research to be done, so this cannot be accomplished in a couple of columns. No, this will take several months, but I will have it done by the end of May so that early voters can have at least some idea.

Other sources might be the newspapers that will also weigh in about that time. However, I think that voters need to be thinking and talking about such a mammoth project long before.

I will continue with other issues that have been written about previously by me. Please feel free to comment on what you think of all this and what your questions are. Sorry, but I will not be able to answer individual questions but to work them into the series columns.

Thanks,
Tom Bevirt

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