With less than 3,000 residents casting ballots, voters easily approved the extension of a 1% Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST, to be collected in the county for another six years.
The measure passed, 2,568-424. As of this election, Bulloch County has 54,549 total registered voters. Of those, 49,598 are counted by the state as “active” from having voted in recent elections.
The sales tax is projected to collect at least $138 million for joint projects and population-based shares for other projects of the governments of Bulloch County and the municipalities of Statesboro, Brooklet, Portal and Register. The largest single planned project is an expansion of the Bulloch County Jail. Buying landfill space is another major item, but the tax also funds capital spending on things ranging from public parks and water and sewer systems to election equipment.
The ballot question does not include specific cost numbers for any of the project categories, but the agreement assigns the jail project $51 million and the joint solid waste project $9.6 million.
The ballot question mentions no numbers other than the projected $138 million total, which is a conservative estimate and not a limit. But the intergovernmental agreement provides a breakout of the amounts for each local government.
Shares by population
After the $60.6 million assigned to the shared-priority jail and solid waste disposal projects, the revenue would be assigned to the county based on the population of its rural area and to the cities based on their shares of the county population.
The county government’s portion of the revenue would be about 55.7% of the projected additional $77.4 million, or $43.1 million. Statesboro’s city share would be 41.2% of the total, or $31.9 million.
The city of Brooklet’s share would be 2.1%, or $1.625 million. The city of Portal’s share would be 0.79%, or $611,460; the town of Register’s share, 0.19%, or $147,060.
If after economic growth or inflation the tax nets more than $138 million, a priority would be repaying “jail debt,” with the agreement allowing the county to borrow up to $60 million for the jail project, or $9 million more than the $51 million priority revenue assigned to that purpose.