At their meeting last week, the ACC Commission approved a list of potential TSPLOST 2026 projects, rejected trash franchising and came to an agreement with First United Methodist Church to demolish the Saye building and replace it with a parking lot.
Contents
TSPLOST 2026
Trash franchising
Saye Building demolition
TSPLOST 2026
The ACC Commission has tentatively decided how they would like to spend $140 million earmarked for transportation projects over the next few years, if a special sales tax is re-approved by voters.
Athens’ 1% Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST) is a special tax that funds transportation projects in Athens. It was last approved by voters in 2022 and typically runs for five years before needing to be approved again. Since then, sales tax collections have been coming in a little faster than expected, placing the tax back on voters’ ballots more quickly (expect a vote sometime in 2026).
A resident advisory group will soon be appointed by the mayor and commission to start reviewing potential projects that could be funded by the tax, which will raise almost $200 million. This advisory group will get significantly more guidance than a similar group had back in 2022, because the ACC Commission has already made a tentative decision on how to spend 70% of the funds.
Last week, the commission decided that they wanted to cover most of the county’s basic infrastructure needs through TSPLOST 2026, not through local property taxes. After using $140 million to account for these needs, only $60 million will remain for new project ideas going forward.
“As a homeowner, I compare this to one’s budget for homeownership,” said Commissioner Carol Myers. “I’m going to maintain the house and the yard, replace the roof and the heating and air before I go on and add a fancy deck or a pool or a house extension.”
Myers drafted the proposal along with Commissioners Patrick Davenport, Ovita Thornton and John Culpepper. Their plan will fund pavement maintenance throughout the county as the big ticket item, using about $55 million for this purpose. This is slightly less than recommended by ACC staff, but it will still hopefully eliminate Athens’ backlog of failing roadways.
Another big priority in the proposal is transit operations; they’ve included $45 million to fully fund Athens Transit at the current level of service through 2031. If this decision holds, the local government won’t need to use property tax dollars for transit for the duration of the sales tax. It will also allow them to avoid the significant expense of purchasing new fareboxes.
Myer’s proposal will allow Athens Transit replace their aging bus fleet at the cost of $15.8 million, and it will allocate $7 million towards a new bus transfer station at the current site of the Georgia Square Mall. Furthermore, it will provide $8.2 million to replace the pipes that are failing underneath Athens’ roads, $4 million for bridge repair and maintenance, $1.25 million for neighborhood traffic management and another $4 million to make up for gaps in TSPLOST 2023 that were caused by rising construction costs or other issues.
This proposal passed 8-2, with Commissioners Allison Wright and Mike Hamby voting in opposition.
Wright (and presumably also Hamby, although he didn’t give a comment) voted no because she felt that these decisions are best made by the resident advisory committee, a group which takes a very intense look at a wide array of Athens’ transportation needs before making their recommendations.
However, the 2022 advisory committee had asked repeatedly to be given more guidance by the commission by predesignating some projects in the way the commission is now doing. That’s because the group was unclear on the extent to which the commission intended to fund basic infrastructure needs by using property tax dollars. This time around, the commission’s intent is clear and the advisory committee will have this information at the very beginning of their deliberations.
One thing to bear in mind is that nothing in Myer’s proposal is binding. The commission can still change the TSPLOST 2026 proposal at the last minute, as Hamby repeatedly made clear to his colleagues during their discussions.
Trash franchising
The ACC Commission has rejected a proposal from the ACC Solid Waste Advisory Committee to adopt a franchising system for trash and recycling pickup outside of the city center.
Franchising would have allowed only a single trash hauler to operate in each of five zones around the county, limiting consumer choice but improving efficiency and possibly reducing costs. Every Athens resident would be required to pay for trash service with the hauler operating in their zone, a detail that was unpopular with some residents.
“There’s about 7,000 people in the county who do not pay for a [trash] hauler every month. Adding this in [would be] a three or four-hundred dollar [yearly] payment for people,” said Myers, explaining one of the reasons why she was opposed to the plan.
ACC Solid Waste staff believe that franchising would have provided an enhanced level of service for residents at a reduced cost. The proposal would have also allowed more control over private haulers which could help ensure they adhere to a minimum level of customer service. Furthermore, it’s likely franchising would reduce the traffic, noise issues, carbon dioxide emissions and road wear and tear that can come from having multiple haulers operating on the same roads.
Myers says she was not convinced that these benefits, as touted by ACC staff, would ever materialize. Most of her colleagues agreed, and the proposal was defeated in a 2-8 vote, with only Davenport and Commissioner Jesse Houle voting to support the plan.
Davenport saw the proposal primarily as a way of saving taxpayer money. He views the current efforts by the local government to pick up after some residents who dump their trash illegally or steal trash service from local businesses by using dumpsters without permission as wasteful and a poor use of resources.
“I still believe the original concept of franchising can work and should work,” Davenport said. “It is literally costing us hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars [a year because of] illegal dumping and service theft. [Franchising is] low-hanging fruit. If everybody in our community feels that they just want to waste millions of dollars, let’s do it. We can keep it how things are.”
Houle agreed and also pointed out how similar communities around the country have all already adopted a franchising system. As a result, these communities have been able to expand service or reduce costs to consumers, according to Houle.
“This proposal moves us in a direction to do better and save money. It would be better for the environment. It would be better for the beautification of our city,” Houle said. “We’re the only community of all the peer communities [staff] looked at who does trash hauling this way… It does not make sense to me why we are walking away from this just because…we had a few dozen people show up to complain.”
This comment irked Myers, who explained that as the chair of the commission’s Legislative Review Committee, she has seen all the same research that Davenport and Houle have and yet has not been convinced.
Saye Building demolition
The ACC Commission has come to an agreement with the First United Methodist Church to demolish the historic Saye building at 110 W. Hancock Avenue.
The First United Methodist Church, which owns the Saye building, has been trying to demolish it for years in favor of a surface parking lot. The west downtown historic district protected the building for a time, but First United Methodist sued the local government in 2023 to force them to allow the demolition.
As the lawsuit proceeded, Superior Court Judge Lisa Lott ordered both parties into mediation. At that point, the ACC Commission struck a deal with the church to avoid the costs of litigation. They decided to allow the church to demolish the building in exchange for “appropriate” greenspace, some public art and a 10’ landscape buffer between the parking lot and the street.
Commissioner Melissa Link, who has been the driving force behind both the creation of the west downtown historic district and the fight to save the Saye building, was the only commissioner who opposed this agreement.
“We are giving special favors to a religious organization in doing this. I don’t believe we would come to the same conclusion if it were any random developer,” Link said.
Link has been extremely vocal and insistent about saving the Saye building from demolition over the years. First United Methodist feels that her actions to establish a demolition moratorium and later to set up a historic district for the western side of downtown have been motivated in part out of discrimination against them.
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