Commissioner Steve Henry speaks during a Catoosa County Commission meeting at the Catoosa County administrative building on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018, in Ringgold, Ga. Commissioners voted unanimously to donate about 5 acres of land to the Catoosa County Board of Education.In step with Walker County, Georgia, officials in Catoosa County are considering a new sales tax to pay for road pavings and other transportation projects.
Catoosa County Commission Chairman Steven Henry, an advocate for the tax, said the local government could cut some money from its general fund if customers paid the extra burden at the cash register. He didn't make any specific promises, but Henry believes the move could lighten property tax bills a bit.
The county would need to put the item on a referendum during an election, and Henry wants voters to decide the issue next year. Elected officials with Catoosa County and the cities of Ringgold and Fort Oglethorpe will discuss the levy, called the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, at a noon meeting Monday.
"I honestly think it's a great thing," Henry said. "We have some much-needed road work that needs to be done in this county."
In the current general fund budget, the county projects to spend about $2.4 million this year on roads and bridges. At the same time, in a five-year plan for spending out of a separate sales tax fund, the county expects to use about $11.4 million for the same reason.
Over the last year, the county and two cities combined have received an average of about $860,000 a month from a similar 1 percent sales tax.
Commissioners Bobby Winters, Ray Johnson and Jeff Long did not return calls seeking comment this week. But Commissioner Jim Cutler said he supports the new tax. He said the county also has asked Catoosa County Schools officials to identify any roads that have been a problem for buses.
"It's really a good thing," he said. "It just helps with the quality of the roads."
Voters in other Northwest Georgia counties are split on the issue. Dade County rejected referendums on the tax in November 2017 and again this May. But in Walker County, about 70 percent of voters accepted the new burden in a November 2017 referendum.
The tax in Walker went into place in April. County spokesman Joe Legge said the local government has collected about $300,000 a month from the new 1 percent burden. So far, though, the county has barely touched the money.
In September, Commissioner Shannon Whitfield awarded a $584,000 contract to pave 4.4 miles of Nickajack Road and Nickajack Lane, which run up Lookout Mountain. The county is going to solicit bids this Wednesday to pave Diamond Circle, a 1-mile loop around a subdivision between Rock Spring and LaFayette.
To form a long-term plan for the T-SPLOST money, Whitfield hired Paragon Consulting Group, which evaluated the condition of every road in the county. Whitfield plans to review a report from the group, as well as data about which roads have the heaviest traffic, before deciding how to spend the tax revenue. But Legge said he's not sure when county officials will meet with the consultants about their findings.
In Catoosa County, it's not clear whether there will be a sharing agreement with Ringgold and Fort Oglethorpe. Henry first floated the idea of the new tax during a meeting with the two city councils in September. Ringgold Mayor Nick Millwood said it's too early to tell how any sharing agreement will shake out.
"We don't have anything to do with it," he said. "They're just including us in the conversation. We're not having conversations on the council about supporting it or not supporting it. I'm not opposed to letting people in the community vote on it. It's everybody's road. If they want to invest in the roads in the community, I don't see a problem with letting them have the option to do that."
To prepare for the meeting, Ringgold City Manager Dan Wright created a list of 31 roads in need of repair. Fort Oglethorpe City Manager Jenny Simpkins, meanwhile, declined to discuss last week whether she thought the city's council will support the new tax. Mayor Earl Gray did not return a call seeking comment.
In January, while discussing a vote on a capitol improvements sales tax similar to the transportation tax, elected officials from the three governments negotiated a sharing agreement. In the end, Catoosa County got about 64 percent of the revenue, Fort Oglethorpe got about 23 percent, and Ringgold got about 13 percent.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.