Category: David Pendered

The list of contributions by individuals to the $6.5 million campaign fund for the transportation sales tax is interesting – in terms of who gave, and who didn’t – in a campaign built upon corporate contributions.

Norcross Mayor Bucky Johnson is the only one of the 21 members of the Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable who contributed under his or her own name – $500, on March 16.

Individual contributors such as Johnson account for slightly more than $140,000 of the $6.5 million the campaign expects to raise. The remainder of the campaign fund was provided by about 360 business entities, according to campaign financial disclosures.

Campaign financial disclosures filed by advocates of the transportation sales tax indicate that polls of voter sentiment have been conducted once a quarter since June 2011.

Hill Research, of Auburn Ala., has been paid a total of $289,512 on dates in 2011 in June, September and December, and this year the larger payments were made in March and June. No payments were reported for July in the disclosure released Monday by Citizens for Transportation Mobility.

Though saportareport.com can’t offer the depth of insights presumably contained in Hill’s reports, it can provide a review of some basic information about voters who are the subject of a sales tax campaign with a budget in excess of $10 million – $8.5 million for the persuasion campaign, and an education campaign that reports raising more than $2 million.

The Atlanta Regional Commission will help handle some duties of project management for the $8.5 billion construction program the region would embark upon if voters on July 31 approve the proposed transportation sales tax.

The task would put the region’s metropolitan planning organization in the position of helping to develop the projects as intended by the Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable, the panel of 21 elected officials that approved the $6.14 billion regional project list in October.

During discussions last autumn, roundtable members expressed concern that they would lose their ability to maintain accountability for the list after their work on the roundtable was complete.

The chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission returned fire today on state legislators who’ve criticized the list of projects to be built if voters approve the proposed transportation sales tax.

“To suggest a better list is out there … is simply unfair to the incredible work that’s been done,” said Tad Leithead, ARC’s chair. “No stone has been left unturned.”

Leithead did not identify the target of his remarks. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leaders Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) led a group of five lawmakers who called during an event at the Capitol for voters to reject the proposed 1 percent sales tax.

This story has been updated with details of campaign contributions and expenses.

By Dave Stockert’s account, he and the campaign finance team have done their job in helping to convince voters to support the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation.

They’ve raised about $6.5 million to pay for the advocacy campaign being waged by Citizens for Transportation Mobility, the group Stockert chairs. Now it’s up to the professional campaign staff to prevail with the resources at hand, Stockert said in a meeting with reporters Monday afternoon.

“I feel delighted that we raised it,” Stockert said. “We’ve taken that issue off the table. I think we have an effective campaign. I’m confident it will be good enough when we get to July 31. We don’t have to win 80 percent.”

A new report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors calls upon the nation’s metropolitan areas to increase their investment in transportation.

The report presents a view from 30,000 feet and says nothing about where the money for construction is to come from and little about transit. It doesn’t say a word about metro Atlanta’s upcoming vote on a proposed 1 percent transportation sales tax, nor does it mention any of more than two dozen transportation referendums on ballots this year across the country.

But the 116-page report is choc full of interesting facts and forecasts about metro Atlanta (and other cities) that could help voters decide how to mark their ballots on the July 31 referendum. A few highlights include:

This story has been updated to correct the days the CVS pharmacy is open.

Starbucks will be allowed to sell beer and wine at two locations in Atlanta, but a controversial request by CVS to sell package beer and wine at a new store at Peachtree Center remains in limbo.

Atlanta’s License Review Board has approved permits for Starbucks to sell beer and wine for on-premise consumption at stores at near the OK Cafe, at 1230 West Paces Ferry Road, and near the Walmart on I-75, at 1801 Howell Mill Road. The permits will be issued unless they’re denied by Mayor Kasim Reed.

The board took no action on the CVS proposal for a permit to sell beer and wine for off-site consumption. CVS wants to sell package alcohol at the struggling Peachtree Center, which leasing sheets show was 42 percent vacant before the store opened. CVS didn’t have a representative at the meeting and the item wasn’t called for discussion.

The campaign team working for passage of the transportation sales tax has not filed its report on its campaign finances, according to the report of filings maintained by the state’s Campaign Finance Commission.

The filing deadline was Monday. A grace period extends the final day of submission to July 23 – eight days before the election. The campaign committee must file an electronic report if more than $500 have been raised.

One group that has filed is working for passage in the region just north of metro Atlanta. Another one that filed is based in Warner Robins and is opposing the sales tax.

A small but regionally significant new road that Cobb County officials opened in a ceremony Wednesday morning illustrates the type of congestion relief advocates expect of the proposed transportation sales tax.

The new road is called the Big Shanty Road extension and the problem it solves is all too familiar in metro Atlanta – the barrier of a big road. In this case, the big road is I-75 and its construction in the mid 1970s severed old Big Shanty Road.

The project list of the proposed 1 percent sales tax is peppered with projects like the Big Shanty Road. This is one reason advocates have had such a hard time explaining how the entire region will benefit from a collection of smaller projects.

A great unknown in the campaign for the transportation sales tax is the effect of the social media campaign that’s tailored for young voters – most of whom are presumed to support the tax in order to expand transit.

Traditional campaign measures may not capture these voters. It’s not even clear from the crosstabs of recent polls how voters were contacted. If pollsters used only phone calls on landlines, there’s a good chance the results don’t reflect opinions of the 20-something year olds who tend to communicate on smart phones with calls, emails, texts and Tweets.

These Generation Y voters could emerge as a significant part of any possible silent majority that will mobilize to pass the referendum. The way things look now, the vocal majority is poised to shoot the referendum down in flames, according to a July 11 poll by WSB-TV that showed support from just 33 percent of likely voters.

Monday is a crunch day for the campaign team stumping for voters in metro Atlanta to approve a 1 percent sales tax for transportation.

The first campaign disclosure is due Monday. The campaign leadership must decide whether to meet the deadline, or to wait and file by July 23 – when the grace period ends for showing how much money was raised and from whom, and how much was spent, with whom, and for what purpose.

Monday also is the first day advocates will conduct a campaign event since a new poll shows voter support for the sales tax has slumped to 33 percent. Support has dropped and opposition increased furing the past two months, according to polling conducted on behalf of WSB-TV.

(This story has been updated with results of new poll on voter sentiment about transportation sales tax.)

Metro Atlanta needs to improve its transportation systems or else the region will languish.

The proposed 1 percent sales tax to pay for such improvements is not the perfect solution, but is the best answer the region has now and is likely to face in the future.

These two concepts were among the take-aways from the Friday discussion at the Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable, sponsored by Southface. The panelists were Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd, ARC Director Doug Hooker, and MARTA GM/CEO Beverly Scott – all of whom had a hand last summer in formulating the project list for the proposed 10-county sales tax. The vote is July 31.

Two organized opponents of the proposed 1 percent transportation sales tax said Thursday they are baffled by the allegation by tax advocates that the opponents have not offered an alternative to the tax.

The Sierra Club issued its alternative in writing in April, and members of the Atlanta Tea Party have voiced a consistent set of alternatives since October.

“We have common ground on this issue. There some things we don’t agree on, but we agree that this tax has got to be stopped,” said Debbie Dooley, a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party.

Proponents of the sales tax for transportation are pushing back against a loosely organized group of tax opponents, challenging them to present their solution to the region’s mobility challenges in lieu of the plan that will be on the July 31 ballot.

The opponents were portrayed as “a rare coalition of conservatives and liberals” and represented by state Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) in a story by reporter Jon Shirek that posted Wednesday morning on the website of WXIA/11 Alive. Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, represented the region’s business leaders who advocate for the tax.

A few hours after Shirek’s report was posted on WXIA’s homepage, the following statement was released by Citizens for Transportation Mobility, which was formed in 2010 with Williams listed as one of three founding board members.

The rich tapestry of metro Atlanta will be on display in two events this week, one a photo exhibit of Atlanta in the ’70s and the other a book presentation by the author of a new work on the namesake of the John Ripley Forbes Big Trees Preserve in Sandy Springs.

The photo event includes a film to be shown Wednesday at 11 a.m. at Atlanta City Hall of works by photojournalist Boyd Lewis. An exhibit at City Hall that’s open through Thursday features works by Lewis, who’s known as a white photographer for the black press who chronicled the leaders of the 1970s.

The book presentation is Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the Big Trees Preserve in Sandy Springs. Gary Ferguson, a nationally known nature writer, will discuss his recent book, “Nature Keeper: John Ripley Forbes and the Children’s Nature Movement.”

The most sweeping slate of reforms in some 20 years is on tap for the most popular urban renewal program in the city of Atlanta.

The measures expected from the Atlanta City Council are to be in place by the year’s end, and are to match the five recommendations of a performance audit that reviewed the city’s use of tax allocation districts. TADs enabled construction of such signature projects as Atlantic Station, Georgia Aquarium, projects along the Atlanta BeltLine, and the Center for Civil and Human Rights.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Councilmember Felicia Moore, who chairs the council’s Finance Committee, said after a work session Monday at which Atlanta internal Auditor Leslie Ward presented her agency’s report in a meeting that lasted nearly two hours.

Atlanta’s most successful urban renewal program over the past two decades is the subject of a work session on Monday that’s been called by two committees of the Atlanta City Council.

The primary purpose of the session is to consider results of an audit of the city’s tax allocation districts (TADs) that was released in May by Atlanta’s internal auditor, Leslie Ward. The audit portrays the city’s program as needing more oversight by the council, and it identified $226 million that it says is sitting in city coffers with no specific use attached to the money.

Since the audit was released, the city agency that manages the TAD program has hit two more bumps – one involving a warning issued by a New York bond rating house, the second involving Mayor Kasim Reed.

MARTA is keeping the gears turning on the gritty behind-the-scenes job of establishing the Atlanta BeltLine and Atlanta Streetcar.

MARTA has shepherded the first tier of a required environmental impact study through to the conclusion of its public comment period. On Monday, MARTA’s board is slated to approve an additional expense to cover the cost of acquiring vehicles for the transit system that is to open in the fall of 2013.

Little in either measure is necessarily exciting. But both are required steps on the long path toward building two transit systems that are expected to reshape the way people travel around the regional core of metro Atlanta.

Atlanta’s largest urban renewal program has received a notation in the city’s most recent fiscal evaluation by a New York bond rating house.

Moody’s Investors Service cited the city’s tax allocation districts as one of four potential causes for the city’s credit rating to be downgraded in the future. The report did not cite an immediate concern in any of the four areas.

The Atlanta City Council is launching its own evaluation of the tax allocation district program, based on a report from the city’s auditor. On July 9, the council’s Finance and Community Development committees are slated to convene a work session for the entire city council, Atlanta Board of Education and Fulton County Board of Commissioners.

The economic outlook in metro Atlanta and Georgia appears to be getting brighter, according to several recent credit ratings issued by bond rating agencies.

None of the ratings say the economy is rosy. Just that the walls have held and things aren’t getting beyond control, as is the case in some other parts of the country.

The latest news came in a June 29 bond rating of $396 million in general obligation for Atlanta. Moody’s Investors Services raised its outlook, citing the city’s financial management and role as the hub of a regional trade and transportation hub.