Dec 22, 2022 Spalding County Board of Commissioners Special Called Meeting to vote against LOST renegotiation offer for contract with City of Griffin.
City of Griffin Counter-Offer Rejected as Follows:
Out of 100% of LOST Local Option Sales Tax :
The City of Griffin will receive 40.5%
Spalding County will receive 59.5%
Spalding County Offer to City of Griffin on Dec 19, 2022 was:
The City of Griffin will receive 37%
Spalding County will receive 63%
Spalding County Commissioners voted to RE-OFFER the 37%/63% presented to the City of Griffin on December 19, 2022.
What does this mean for you?
This means if the renegotiation is not agreed upon between the parties, by December 30, 2022, the city and county will lose the LOST revenue. And the funds received will not be used to offset the millage rate rollback for the next years millage rate vote.
County, City, and School did not rollback millage rate in 21 or 22.
What Happens Next?
DISPUTE RESOLUTION Nonbinding Arbitration/Mediation Requirement If no agreement on a distribution certificate has been reached after 60 days following the commencement of negotiations, the law (O.C.G.A. § 48-8-89(d)(3)) requires the parties to submit the dispute to “nonbinding arbitration, mediation, or such other means of resolving conflicts.”
This is the final required step in negotiating a new distribution certificate.
Removal of Baseball Arbitration In 2010, the GA General Assembly amended the LOST statute to allow cities and counties to appeal to a superior court judge if the parties were unable to reach an agreement during LOST negotiations. This was placed in law as a final step following the dispute resolution requirement. However, in 2013 this "baseball arbitration" portion of the law was ruled unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court because it gave the courts a legislative power. Since 2013, despite efforts to establish a process to replace “baseball arbitration” that cities and counties can use where agreement cannot be reached between the parties, nothing has yet been devised to serve this purpose. Therefore, currently, until a new dispute resolution process can be put in place the parties must reach an agreement or risk losing the LOST funds.
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REMINDER: Under OCGA 48-8-91: The city and county and schools must offset the following years millage rate to the exact penny of the LOST revenue received in the last fiscal year. In 2022, the county, city, and school board did not roll back the millage rate.
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Taken from Agenda Notes:
Commissioner Flowers-Taylor then stated that she would like to make a few comments:
First, I would like for all our community to know, no one here has ever nor is now "giggling" over the situation in which we currently find ourselves. We should ALL be working toward a position for what is "BEST" for our community in regard to the LOST distribution.
Second, we are not relying solely on the numbers from our County Manager, the consultant we hired, or from members of our community like Chuck Copeland who offered his assessment of the numbers both at a townhall meeting and in writing. Rather, you elected us to represent you and that's exactly what we're doing. The commissioners up here, me and Commissioner Johnson, attended the training like our staff did for LOST renegotiation. We've done our own homework. We've looked at the numbers and we are confident that the offer we made Monday evening represents the best and final offer the county is willing to make. An offer that is equitable for all of us. It is not in favor of the County, nor is it in favor of the City. It's a number that is best for our entire community.
Finally, I take exception to comments made about one side taking care of employees pay over another. We all have the same challenges of paying an equitable wage for the hard work our employees do day in and day out. And we're all struggling to pay our bills. I can't speak for anyone but me, I live in the City. I don't want my City taxes going up, nor do I want my County taxes going up. I do realize however that if we're going to partner, and I do believe there's still a chance for us to truly partner that both the City and the County need to realize that there's a need for us to re-look at the distribution allocation and ensure that we take our emotions out of it and just look at meeting half way for the distribution and that's exactly what the County has done. The numbers are subjective and yes, our initial numbers were high in favor of the County and the City's numbers were high in favor of the City. The County recognizes the subjectivity of the numbers and we've moved from our original numbers to the middle and isn't that what you're supposed to do in negotiations? Negotiation is about moving; the City hasn't moved. They want things to stay the same. We're just not going to be able to stay there, nor do we think that's the right thing to do for our community. Motion carried unanimously by all.
2. Discussion and potential vote on proposed LOST distribution.
Motion/Second by Dutton/Flowers-Taylor to reoffer to the City the exact amounts that were offered at the meeting Monday night as the best and final offer to the City and approve the Chairman to sign the Certificate of Distribution should the City agree to the distribution.
Commissioner Dutton stated there was some discussion surrounding how the Department of Revenue viewed the offer, he asked Dr. Ledbetter if he could clarify this for everyone?
Dr. Ledbetter then advised that he had talked with two individuals at the Department of Revenue. Mr. Hill, a supervisor at the Department of Revenue and he exchanged emails this morning over the distribution as presented in our offer on Monday evening. Mr. Hill advised that a graduated distribution is permissible and allowed under DOR rules, there is nothing in the code to prevent us from using the percentages of allocation as presented to the DOR for review this morning. The comment by Mr. Hill was that “as long as the distribution allocation equals 100% each year, we are allowed to make changes to the allocation as it stands in the draft Certificate of Distribution. Motion carried unanimously by all Dec 22, 2022 County Board of Commissioners Emergency Session to vote for LOST renegotiation contract with City of Griffin.
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How much is enough, because the last three years the county budget has exploded by 15%.
FY 2023 Budget= $62,575,795.00 (Million) an increase of $6,282,599.00 or 10% from 22 to 23
FY 2022 Budget = $56,293,196.00 (Millions) $3,185,087.00 or 5.6%
from 21 to 22 FY 2021 Budget = $53,108,109.00 (Millions)
A total increase from 2021 to 2023 = $9,467,686.00 or 15% _______________________________________________________________
In FY 2023 the City of Griffin Budget Revenues increased to $139,522,385.00 (budget of $151,000,000.00) up from FY 2022 $122,982,366.00 a 13.4% increase in Revenue and a 23.77% increase in Budget from FY 2022 of $122,000,000.00
FY 2021 City of Griffin Budget $122,000,000.00 a 1.67% increase from FY 20 budget, and a Budget Revenue of $122,982,366.00 a 2.7% increase over FY 2021
FY 2020 City of Griffin Budget was $120,000,000.00 City
2016-2022 SPLOST totals:
Total Bonded Projects: $10,722,998.30
Total Pay as you go Projects: $11,705,489.70
Total Projects costs: $22,428,488.00
Total City SPLOST 2016 Revenue Collected: $22,590,695.00
Total City Revenue collected for LOST from 2016-2021: $23,638,830.00 _________________________________________________________________ DOES NOT INCLUDE SCHOOL BUDGETS< ALL HAVE INCREASED BY MILLIONS>
Total SPLOST's since 2008:
2008 SPLOST: 54,000,000.00 (Million) (Passed by Voters)(Senior Citizens Bus)
2014 SPLOST: $50,400,000.00 (Failed to pass by Voters)
2015\16 SPLOST: $50,400,000.00 (Passed by Voters) (Pickle ball/Aquatic Center)
2017 TSPLOST: $42,000,000.00 (Failed to Pass by Voters)
2021 TSPLOST: $48,000,000.00 (Passed by Voters)
TOTAL Passed: $152,400,000.000 Since 2008
TOTAL Failed: $92,400,000.00 Since 2008
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