Macon City Council Members Discuss Local Option Sales Tax

Macon City Council members struggled to figure out how to prioritize projects that a new special purpose sales tax would help fund.

A list of 49 items was laid before council today, all of which Macon residents feel should be funded by the sales tax. Mayor Robert Reichert says the process of prioritizing the projects is a very important one, and the clock is ticking to get a consensus on which projects the council should focus on.

“If we wait as late as August 16th to pass this by council–that is the intergovernmental agreement which agrees to the list of projects–if it’s beyond August 16th, the county attorney has indicated he’s got serious problems getting his legal work done and getting it to the board of elections in time to be included on the November ballot,” Reichert said.

The Mayor and many council members agreed that recreation facilities need to be at the top of the list. Some Council members said the completion of the Tubman museum should be top priority, but all agreed that downtown Macon should be the focus of the special purpose local option sales tax.