Walker County Commissioner Bebe HeiskellCALHOUN, Ga. — Finishing the nuts and bolts of deciding what transportation projects to tackle in the next 10 years, the 30 members of the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission moved on Thursday to a more daunting task — how to get the voters to approve the money needed for the projects.
The executive committee spent about a month selecting the 105 projects — to the tune of $1 billion over 10 years — for the 15 counties in Northwest Georgia.
On Thursday morning, the full commission met for its first discussion on how the money will be divided.
But rather than talking much about the project list, commission members discussed the difficulty of persuading voters to adopt a 1 cent local option sales tax next year to pay for the work. Some blamed state legislators who passed the law this spring.
“What I want to know is when state legislators are going to man up and vote on a tax,” Jasper Mayor John Weaver said to applause from other members. “If this is such a great thing, the legislators need to pass this dang thing.”