A lot of ifs in Cobb transit funding plan

$41 million: Building the dedicated lane

$36.7 million: Traffic signals; fare collection system and equipment; central control

$35.6 million: Contingency

$34.8 million: Construct stations — platforms, ramps and parking

$32.8 million: Land; relocation of existing households and businesses

$22.2 million: Vehicles and spare parts

$20.9 million: Operations and maintenance facility

$4.9 million: Station architecture

$493.7: Total

Source: Cobb County Department of Transportation.

Cobb County leaders want to pay for a half-billion-dollar transit system from Kennesaw to Midtown with a financing plan that resembles a house of cards — pull any one out, and the whole project comes crashing down.

First, the county officials must ask voters in November for $100 million in special purpose sales tax revenue; then, they have to secure a highly competitive federal grant that could provide up to half the funding; last, they’d still have to find $152 million more to complete the deal.

And all of the county’s ideas for how to fill that funding gap are equally uncertain.

One idea, using property taxes from businesses along the bus rapid transit line, may require buy-in from Cobb County schools. And as yet, no private investors are lined up, and the county has not secured any agreements for additional funding from cities and institutions — think Kennesaw State University — along the route.

“We don’t have any money just laying around unaccounted for that we could commit,” Powder Springs Mayor Pat Vaughn said.

Austell Mayor Joe Jerkins added that additional funding for the project “needs to come from somewhere else.”

The line would operate like a train — but with rubber tires and bigger vehicles — on a dedicated lane to be built along much of the thoroughfare.

It would cut a path through some of the most congested roads in metro Atlanta, from Kennesaw State, past the Big Chicken, down through the Cumberland area and past the new Atlanta Braves stadium, before linking up with I-75 and rolling on to a MARTA station in Midtown.

A key report being prepared for the Federal Transportation Administration says the county will consider creating a district — a collection of businesses along the transit line — that it believes would experience a rise in property values because of the project. Cobb would then corral taxes generated by that increase in value to help fund the project.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained the report, a draft environmental assessment, through Georgia’s Open Records Act.

The AJC asked Cobb transportation director Faye DiMassimo whether property taxes used to fund the project would come at the expense of schools. She referred the question to an employee in the county’s Community Services Department. Commission Chairman Tim Lee then refused to allow that employee to answer questions about the financing of the project.

Lee, a champion for the project, insisted that all inquiries be directed to him, then said he would not answer any questions until Friday — which he knew would be too late for this article.

Randy Scamihorn, vice chairman of the Cobb school board, said he would be “very reluctant to support” any plan that would siphon money away from schools without more information because “we’re not swimming in cash.”

Lee is to meet today with the mayors of Cobb’s six cities to seek their support for adding $100 million for the project to this fall’s sales tax referendum.

Four of the mayors reached this week by the AJC support placing a sales tax referendum on ballots in November, but it’s unclear how many would support adding bus rapid transit to the project list.

Acworth Mayor Tommy Allegood said he was keeping an open mind: “We are really waiting to hear if there’s going to be consensus from the other mayors and the county,” he said.

Additional federal grants

The county hopes to secure a grant that could provide up to $250 million in seed funding for the project. The Federal Transit Authority will make that award early next year.

County officials have published three funding scenarios, each of which rely on other federal grants to pay for large portions of the project. The first scenario assumes $140 million in additional federal funds; the second, $91 million; and the third, $41 million.

The funding scenarios were drafted by the county’s consultant Kimley-Horn — the same firm hired by the Braves to perform a traffic study for the stadium.

In an interview this week, DiMassimo named four federal grants that could deliver the additional funding. But an AJC analysis of those grants found that three of the grants average awards of only between $1 and $4 million per project. The fourth, a TIGER grant, averages about $20 million per transit project.

The FTA announced last month that it has received $9.5 billion in grant requests — 15 times the $600 million set aside for the program this year.

When pressed on how the county can assume such large amounts of federal funding, DiMassimo said: “We’ve given you conceptual scenarios, and I really don’t have any other detail right now.”

Special meeting

The transit project could be one of many funded if voters approve the penny sales tax renewal. It would raise up to $750 million over six years.

Commissioners will finalize that list in July. All are not on board with including the transit project in the sales tax referendum.

Commissioner Bob Ott, who represents the Cumberland area, said placing transit on the list of projects for the vote could doom the entire referendum. Commissioner JoAnn Birrell said she was “leaning toward it not being on” the list, while Commissioner Lisa Cupid also was skeptical.

“Five hundred million dollars seems pretty steep given the other needs in the county,” Cupid said.

Interviewed last week at a regional transportation meeting, Lee said he was still providing information about the project to commissioners.

“I believe they need to evaluate it overall from different angles so they can make an educated decision,” Lee said.

DiMassimo questioned whether the county could afford not to make the investment in transit. Cobb Parkway is a major thoroughfare with an average of about 35,000 vehicles per day. By 2040, daily traffic volume is expected to grow to about 55,000 vehicles — a 57 percent increase.

“Clearly, this is the corridor of our future,” she said.