Super Ginormous

03.22.2001

Referendum Passes

Here’s what we voted on:

FINAL RESULTS LOCAL REFERENDUM

“Shall a one per­cent sales and use tax for edu­ca­tional pur­poses of the Colum­bia County School Dis­trict (the “School Dis­trict”) be reim­posed within Colum­bia County for a max­i­mum period of time of 20 cal­en­dar quar­ters, for the pur­poses of pro­vid­ing funds to pay (1) the cost of acquir­ing, con­struct­ing, and equip­ping one new ele­men­tary school and one new mid­dle school, adding and equip­ping new class­rooms at exist­ing high schools, acquir­ing land for future schools, adding to, ren­o­vat­ing, repair­ing, improv­ing, and equip­ping exist­ing school build­ings and other build­ings and facil­i­ties use­ful or desir­able in con­nec­tion there­with, and acquir­ing any nec­es­sary prop­erty there­for, both real and per­sonal, (2) the cost of acquir­ing instruc­tional and admin­is­tra­tive tech­nol­ogy improve­ments for exist­ing schools and acquir­ing school buses, the max­i­mum cost of the projects described in clauses (1) and (2) above to be $42,067,795, and (3) the cost of retir­ing a por­tion of the School District’s Gen­eral Oblig­a­tion Bonds, dated Sep­tem­ber 1, 1976, Gen­eral Oblig­a­tion Refund­ing Bonds, dated Decem­ber 1,1992, Gen­eral Oblig­a­tion Refund­ing Bonds, Series 1993, Gen­eral Oblig­a­tion Refund­ing Bonds Series 1994, Gen­eral Oblig­a­tion Bonds, Series 1994-A, and Gen­eral Oblig­a­tion School Refund­ing Bonds, Series 1998, by pay­ing or mak­ing pro­vi­sion for the pay­ment of the prin­ci­pal of and inter­est on such bonds com­ing due on April 1, 2003 through Octo­ber 1, 2007, in the max­i­mum amount of $27,932,205?”

“If reim­po­si­tion of the tax is approved by the vot­ers, such vote shall also con­sti­tute approval of the issuance of gen­eral oblig­a­tion debt of the Colum­bia County School Dis­trict in the prin­ci­ple amount of $16,000,000 for the pur­pose set forth in clause (1) of the above ques­tion, to pay cap­i­tal­ized inter­est inci­dent thereto, and to pay expenses inci­dent to accom­plish­ing the foregoing.”

Final Tally: YES 4841, NO 626

Taken from the Colum­bia County Website

“So?” you’re prob­a­bly ask­ing. “What’s the big deal?” Well, for one, it is a good thing that the ref­er­en­dum passed. Colum­bia County has long been touted as hav­ing one of the best school sys­tems in Geor­gia, and the money the one-cent sales tax gen­er­ates will def­i­nitely be of great ben­e­fit to the county and to its schools. It is also a good thing that it passed so over­whelm­ingly with 4841 vot­ers for the mea­sure and only 626 against. But, when you con­sider that the num­ber of vot­ers only accounted for roughly 9% of the county’s reg­is­tered vot­ers, the fig­ure is piti­ful. Reports have indi­cated that the only peo­ple who really voted for the mea­sure were pri­mar­ily teach­ers and par­ents with school-aged children.

The county adver­tised the mea­sure piti­fully. Sparse sign place­ment, ran­dom radio announce­ments and an edi­to­r­ial in the Augusta Chron­i­cle were all that made men­tion of the mea­sure. It’s no won­der hardly any­one voted. No one knew about it! If they wanted peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate, they should have adver­tised the mea­sure better!

I, for one, did vote. I was among the 5,467 vot­ers who did make it out to the polls. Vot­ing is impor­tant, regard­less of the issue. Why? Because these kinds of things affect the whole county. A one-cent sales tax raises prices, albeit rather insignif­i­cantly, but it can pos­si­bly make a dif­fer­ence for some peo­ple. It’s impor­tant to get out there and vote. That’s the whole point of democ­racy. Peo­ple that don’t vote shouldn’t bitch, because they didn’t join the few that DID decide.

This item was posted by Chris Harrison.

Tags:

• columbiacounty
• democracy
• funding
• georgia
• referendum
• school
• taxes
• voting

Categories:

• Local
• Politics

You can follow comments on this item via the RSS 2.0feed.

Comments are closed.