September 25, 2011

I need to take a moment to expand on my September 19, 2011 post. 

I talked about how my opponent spent $405,000 on the purchase of 5512 and 5514 Main Street; however, I did not tell you that those funds came from SPLOST VI.  The portion of SPLOST VI for Flowery Branch was $2.5 million, but those numbers were based off of a different economic time and the anticipated annual income for Flowery Branch was expected to be about $35,000 a month.  Also, if you look at the list the City Administration and Real Estate/Buildings was number four on the list and the Cinnamon Cove Lift Station and Force Main Line was number one as well as the allotted money is the maximum we can spend on each line item.

The original expected SPLOST VI revenue was expected to be $240 million over 72 months or an average of about $3.33 million a month, however, the actual numbers for the first two years are coming in closer to $2 million a month which is only 62% of the original projected numbers.

On March 17, 2009, only nine percent of the Hall County registered voters went to the pole and voted for SPLOST VI and Chairman Tom Oliver was quoted in Access North Georgia saying, “We think toward the middle of SPLOST Six that revenues could exceed what we projected them to be” and my opponent must have agreed and on May 6, 2009, she voted with the majority to purchase $405,000 worth of buildings at 5512 and 5514 Main Street.

With only 62% of Flowery Branch’s expected SPLOST VI revenue, we are now looking to only collect about $1.6 million and already spent $405,000 on buildings we did not need, as well as some we spent a small portion of SPLOST VI to get some badly needed police cars leaving Flowery Branch significantly short of the $1.3 million needed to go towards the now $1.6 million Cinnamon Cove lift station and force main.  Now Flowery Branch will need to take a loan out to cover the shortfall and added expenses of a badly needed sewer line to prevent Buford from creeping further into Hall County as well as give us the future ability to expand the sewer plant to two million gallons.

As you can see from the SPLOST VI project list, there was $500,000 for roads and at a cost of about $100,000 a mile, that is five less miles of newly paved roads in “Old Town” and our older neighborhoods.

My opponent’s inability to look at the future economic conditions as well as her inept ability to plan for the future properly is bad for Flowery branch.  We must have people on the council who are forward thinkers.