Peachtree City Mayor Don Haddix is leading a charge for Fayette County to secede from the ten-county Atlanta region, over the possibility of being forced to pay for transit like MARTA. The Atlanta region is scheduled to vote on a sales tax referendum for transportation in 2012.
On the other hand, leaders in Fulton, DeKalb and Atlanta say they have been forced to pay for MARTA alone too long. Some of them say the referendum should make other counties pitch in – or they may oppose the vote.
The Legislature labored four years to produce the referendum, and transportation planners say it carries some of the best hopes for metro Atlanta congestion relief. With some taking do-or-die positions on opposite sides of the issue, is it doomed? Or is this all flak on the way to success in pass the referendum?
Flak and success, insisted Chick Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, which is helping draw up the project list.
"I think it’s a little bit of putting stakes in the ground," hoping to get what they want on the project list voters will see, Krautler said. "I think in the long run we’ll work through all of these issues."
The list of efforts under way is long. The mayor of Chattahoochee Hills flat-out opposes the referendum already unless a regionally funded transit system is created. The mayors of Fulton County, except Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, joined each other last month in a press conference and are signing various statements advocating for a regional transit system, in part to spread the burden of funding MARTA. The mayors of DeKalb county may have a joint appearance on the issue within about a month, said Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd. The county commissions of Fulton and DeKalb are working on a joint resolution, and the city of Atlanta has taken it up too.
Under the law, the referendum is now up to the voters, not the elected officials. But the officials could have an effect in swaying the voters one way or the other.
However, there is one thing officials can do on their own to change course, if it can be pulled off. That's secession from the Atlanta region.
In Peachtree City, the city council met Thursday evening to discuss being asked to fund mass transit that the mayor says they barely use. Haddix has made his presentation on leaving the Atlanta region to other city councils and hoped to bring it before the Fayette County commission, he said. The current county commission chair, Jack Smith, was unseated by a challenger who beaned Smith for supporting regional transit. That challenger, Steve Brown, takes office in January and said he would "absolutely" support a motion to secede from the Atlanta region. Secession would also take support by the Legislature.
The proposal to ask the county commission to leave the Atlanta region failed in the city council late Thursday by a 3-2 vote.
Peachtree City resident Robert Brown said that Fayette County would lose out if it stayed in the Atlanta region. "We're not going to get any projects funded out of the regional pot of money that's in the ARC."
ARC officials said no project list had been developed yet.
“The focus is Atlanta, Atlanta, Atlanta,” Haddix said. “We understand we’re kind of attached, we have mutual needs, but we don’t want to be Atlanta. We don’t want to be absorbed into Atlanta.”
So far, it's not always clear what the different factions want , and there is disagreement within the separate camps. The county commissions of DeKalb and Fulton seem likely to delete a part of their draft resolution that demands regional help on MARTA funding and threatens opposition. "Sometimes you just have to be realistic with what the leadership and the Legislature is going to do," said DeKalb Commissioner Lee May.
As of this week the Fulton County mayors had not all agreed on an exact position on paper, said Johns Creek Mayor Mike Bodker and Roswell Mayor Jere Wood. In previous discussions, divisions between some of the mayors on the subject of transit have been visible.
Sandy Springs Mayor Eva Galambos last year opposed a temporary $25 million infusion from ARC to help MARTA. Galambos called for a regionally funded transit system then too, calling MARTA "an enterprise that shows nothing but red ink" where she has seen "mismanagement" over the years. But Bodker approved the help.
Now, Bodker said Haddix's plan didn't make sense. "I would ask Mayor Haddix a simple question," Bodker said. "Where is it his citizens work? Do all his citizens live work and play in Peachtree City?...The mere fact that we have a successful transit system means there is less congestion on our roads. Transit is a win for everybody even if they’re not the one actually using it."
Haddix replied that most of his constituents, if they don't work in Fayette, work "around the airport and in Clayton County."
According to the ARC, 27 percent of employed Fayette County residents work in that county. Of the rest, the largest portion, 22 percent, work in Fulton County, 17 percent in Clayton, and the rest in DeKalb, Cobb and other counties.
State Planning Director Todd Long said that from a statewide perspective it didn't matter what Fayette did because they'd have the opportunity for a referendum whether they were in the Atlanta region or the region they're thinking of joining, Three Rivers. If they joined Three Rivers and the tax passed there, Long said, Fayette would pay the same tax but get $1.7 million less discretionary money. Under the law each county gets a small portion of the overall regional tax to spend on its own.
To some in Fayette County, what matters is how the overall tax is spent.
Keith Starkey, a 20-year Peachtree City resident said, "I'm thinking we ought to stay in. Why do we think we're in an island?"
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