All up to Aragon for ballot initiative in November

The Cedartown City Commission and the Rockmart City Council gave their OK at the start of this week for the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax to become a ballot initiative in November.

Cedartown Commissioners approved the SPLOST 2026 memorandum of understanding between Polk County and the Cities of Cedartown, Rockmart and Aragon for getting the measure on the ballot to extend the penny sales tax collection.

Their Monday night vote made the city the second municipality to approve pushing for a ballot measure coming up in November, and then the City of Rockmart followed suit on Tuesday evening with their vote to approve SPLOST by the City Council.

City managers in Rockmart and Cedartown along with local officials with the county and Aragon have worked together in a municipal committee to determine how much and what to seek in this package of penny sales tax collections. SPLOST gets approved by voters for a six-year round of collections, which would close out in 2026 and need reapproval before it expires to continue seeking sales tax money for local projects.

Now the measure is up to the Aragon City Council next week on May 18, and they are the last municipal government to decide whether SPLOST will be on the ballot. Their percentage of collections is the lowest among the Cities and County working together.

The process has gone through smoothly so far in negotiations for the intergovernmental agreement for SPLOST 2026 and to seek the referendum to go onto local ballots this November. By comparison, the Local Option Sales Tax negotiations in 2022 were contentious and saw the cities and county having frank discussions over percentages sought by each municipality.

The $64 million sought to be collected started in SPLOST 2026 will pay for a variety of items, but among the major projects being sought in this go-round of the penny sales tax will be dealing with the need for increased courthouse space for the County Government’s portion.

Other projects – everything from park improvements, new vehicles, road paving to infrastructure, economic development and more – are part of this round of funding requests going to voters if all the municipalities agree to move forward.

SPLOST was approved most recently in 2019 for the 2020 SPLOST package, now three years into its collections. Local officials in a previous meeting noted they sought to go forward with approving an extension to SPLOST so if the measure failed for this upcoming round of votes in November during local elections, there will still be time in either or both 2024 and 2025 to pass a SPLOST extension before it expires in 2026.