Durrett Fields TSPLOST Questions from BBA

Jim Durrett, Executive Director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District, spoke at length about the TSPLOST - a one-cent sales tax to pay for $8.5 billion in road and transit projects -  at last week's breakfast meeting of the Buckhead Business Association.

The TSPLOST is quickly approaching a vote on July 31 and opinions about it are sharply divided. Aware that many people have already made up their minds, Durrett said he hoped the information he provided could help someone unsure of how to vote on this important issue come to a decision.

Durrett fielded many questions from BBA members concerned about how the TSPLOST will be implemented, should it pass in the upcoming vote.

Read on to see if your own questions about TSPLOST were answered: 

How is the TSPLOST different from the Ga. 400 project? Citizens were told the Ga. 400 tolls, which are still in place, . How can citizens be sure the one-cent sales tax will end after 10 years, as promised?

Durrett said Ga. 400 represents promises made by politicians that are no longer in office.

"It wasn't written into law and the new folks said 'we still have unfinished business and we are going to keep this toll going a little while longer,'" he explained. "In this [TSPLOST] case you don't have that kind of wiggle room. It is written into the law. It wasn't written into the law as it relates to the Ga. 400 toll."

Can't politicians just change the laws?

"Yes, they can come up with a new law but it will be after this one and they will have to come back to the public and say, 'do you want to do this or something else in the future?'"

Why do those in power feel that Atlanta has to be bigger to be better?

"I have always wondered at what point does a place become too populated for it to be a quality place? So you've got to figure out the balance between quantity and quality," Durret said.

He explained that, should the TSPLOST pass, investments will be made in multiple modes of transportation, which provides options that people don't currently have today for how they get around. He believes that this in turn will create more livable communities that take advantage of transportation investments rather than "chasing development with new transportation alternatives." 

"I don't know of any way to turn off the faucet so that people don't come here anymore. I would rather be prepared," he said.

How much attention has been given in the project list to the needs of the rapidly aging population?

"A lot of attention has been paid not only to that but also to the millennials, the people after Generation X," Durrett said. "Those two cohorts, seniors and millennials, are the fastest growing segments of the population."

Research shows that those two groups want essentially the same thing — they want to be close to amenities, he said.

"They want to live in Buckhead, meaning 'I can walk out of my place and walk or take transit to all of the things that I want to be close to everyday.' That is absolutely part of the thinking behind the transportation planning. The projects weren't developed by politicians in order to satisfy a constituency's feelings about something. There was a lot of planning and research about what our needs are going to be in the future, as well as today."

How many of the projects are aimed at cutting pollution?

"A lot of the projects are directed at getting people out of cars and giving them other options," Durrett said.

He explained research shows that, if all the proposed projects are built, tailpipe emissions would be reduced by 1.2 million pounds per day — equivalent to taking 72,000 cars off the road everyday. 

"We spend a lot of time idling in traffic, sitting and waiting for a bottle neck to get broken up and that is when you are spewing out the pollution. Each individual project that they've done has been designed to reduce that kind of problem."

What happens if the projects come in over budget?

Durrett said the most important question when it comes to this issue is "how good of a job was done coming up with the budget to begin with?" Local governments developed budgets to do the projects that were given into the pot, he said, and then the Georgia Regional Transit Authority and GDOT hired independent people to take a look at those budgets and analyze them. If they felt a budget was overly optimistic, it would be increased, he said.

"They are going to be managed to budget and they are going to be looked at all the time. When it looks like something is getting out of whack, it is going to be all hands on deck saying 'what do we do about this?' and that is the approach they are going to take. People have thought about that and tried to put the best protection possible in place for making sure that doesn't happen." 

What happens to the penny sales tax at the end of the 10 years?

"It goes away and then we probably will have an opportunity to say 'what do we do now?' But I hope we will have figured out what we do now before we get to the end of the ten year period."

Durrett said the TSPLOST is buying Atlanta time to think about a sustainable method of dealing with the traffic problem, as opposed to making hasty decisions about one-off opportunities for temporary solutions.

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