As always with such votes, there are many who have reasonable arguments for voting against it. I voted against the current E-SPLOST, for example, for a variety of reasons. It passed by about 2 to 1. I voted for last summer’s T-SPLOST in spite of my concerns about a number of very expensive projects that seemed likely to fuel sprawl. That vote failed by 57-43 here in Chatham County. I was a very, very reluctant yes for SPLOST in 2006 because I did not approve of the emphasis being placed on the new jail. That referendum passed by 60-40.

The opponents to SPLOST seem to fall into a variety of camps, which are at times overlapping:

• Those who don’t want to see governments rely on regressive sales taxes, period.
• Those who view the SPLOST revenue as a massive slush fund that serves the interests of government insiders.
• Those who have supported SPLOST in the past but  simply do not trust the current leaders in Chatham County.
• Those who object to Savannah’s plans for a new arena, which would require about 1/3rd of total SPLOST revenue collected between 2014 and 2020.
• Those who feel like local officials have not sufficiently made the case for enough of the individual expenditures.
• Those who oppose every tax, no matter what. (Many of these people nevertheless complain about poor facilities and services.)

I feel like a lot of those concerns are misplaced or exaggerated to some degree, but all of those strike me as possibly reasonable arguments for opposing SPLOST.

Of those objections, I’ve spent the most time writing about the proposed new arena. Click here for a bunch of posts with links and images. I think we need a new arena, and I’m excited about the Westside location and about the potential redevelopment on the site of the current arena in the heart of the Historic District. Some have pointed out that there’s no management plan for a new arena, but we’re looking at a decade before the new facility would be finished. We could do a study and come up with some sort of detailed management plan, but there are so many variables in looking that far ahead that such a study might not be very valuable. Of course, we’re already paying to operate the current arena, which will become increasingly obsolete and will require more and more maintenance as the years roll on.

Savannah Morning News reporter Marcus E. Howard has an excellent piece about the planned $130-plus million budgeted for SPLOST projects by Chatham County government. As I did in a column a few weeks ago, Howard notes the $12 million budgeted for Memorial Stadium, a facility pretty much only used for high school football.

Also in today’s paper, Eric Curl looks at the city of Savannah’s proposed spending which is dominated by a new arena but which includes tens of millions in other infrastructure spending. You can also see the SPLOST project lists from all the municipalities at the end of Eric’s piece.

State Representative Ron Stephens advocates for SPLOST in an SMN op-ed this morning. From that piece:

In the spirit of co-authoring the Stephens-Day Tax Exemption, I stand behind measures that put money back into the wallets of folks in Chatham County. I support initiatives that give Chatham County a competitive edge, which is why I urge Chatham County voters to vote “yes” to SPLOST.

SPLOST has generated $1.4 billion since 1985. While some tout 27 years of this 1 percent sales tax as a negative on our economy, I look around and see almost three decades worth of serious infrastructure and improvements that may not otherwise have been possible without SPLOST funding. […]

Since SPLOST became eligible for drainage improvements in 1997, the City of Savannah has reduced its property tax rate by 29 percent. This does not include measures other municipalities have taken to keep property taxes low.

If SPLOST were not available, local governments would have to rely more heavily on property taxes again. This would negatively impact businesses, since the Stephens-Day Homestead Exemption has effectively frozen property taxes for most homeowners.

If SPLOST fails, local municipalities will still need to do work on roads, sidewalks, the beach, drainage, public safety and so forth. In other words, expect property tax increases if the tax is defeated.

From the Savannah Morning News’ editorial today:

Reasonable people can debate whether every single one of the 73 items represents a genuine “need” as opposed to a “want.” Thereâ€s a difference.

Just because a local government wants something doesnâ€t mean it absolutely needs it and canâ€t live without out.

But these same people — assuming they remain reasonable — should agree that the number of needs on this list far exceeds the number of wants. For example, 21 of these projects — almost a third of the total — are directly tied to road/drainage/sewer/transportation projects from one end of the county to the other.

Roads like Pooler Parkway, Benton Boulevard, DeRenne Avenue and Chatham Parkway need work. The eastside islands (Concord Road on Wilmington Island is but one example) and areas in the City of Savannah need better drainage. Port Wentworth must upgrade its sewer system and Thunderbolt needs to replace its water lines. Whether or not SPLOST passes, these needs donâ€t disappear.

I actually don’t necessarily agree that all those road projects are “needs” but I make a related point in my City Talk column today: you’re never going to find a countywide project list that 100 percent of voters see as necessities.

At the end of each of these articles, you can read the general complaints expressed again and again by a relatively small number of Savannah Morning News readers. Some of those complaints and objections are obviously reasonable ones, but many aren’t.

There are obviously roads connecting those points, but they’re unsatisfactory. Several key stretches have no sidewalks, and most feel too narrow for safety on a bicycle. So even a tourist at a nearby hotel (there are several west of MLK in the immediate area) or a nearby resident would probably end up driving even for the simplest of trips. Those without cars or licenses or simply not old enough to drive would be SOL.

There are lots of people who live in the immediate area, including residents of westside neighborhoods like Carver Heights and West Savannah, residents of SCAD dorms, and residents along MLK, like those in the Frogtown Lofts.

In other words, the connectivity on that side of town is terrible. And it’s terrible for cars in addition to cyclists and pedestrians, in large part because of the unfriendly traffic flow created by the I-16 flyover and the lack of parking in the MLK corridor.

I’ve discussed the flyover many times before. While that’s not a direct part of the problems addressed by the new “West Boundary Civic Vision Plan” — the so-called “canal district” — envisioned in the conceptual drawings of Sottile & Sottile, those eventual changes to the terminus of I-16 would complement this broader effort.

Christian and Amy Sottile are well known to many of you, I’m sure, either personally or through the fine work they’ve done in considering the urban fabric of Savannah. They get it.

The Sottiles see the great potential for culture and commerce on the western fringe of downtown. Their conceptual approach takes advantage of existing streets and historical assets.

It’s worth noting that thousands of trips are made daily and safely along the West Boundary Street corridor, even though our current infrastructure actively impedes many of those trips. With more connectivity, more beauty, and more civic pride, that area can become a real gem in relatively short order.

Of course, the Sottiles aren’t the only ones who see all that potential. Individual entrepreneurs, corporations, nonprofits, and SCAD have all been actively investing and expanding their presence west of MLK over the last decade, despite a crippling recession.

These images have already been published elsewhere, but I present them here since they give some good illustrations of the possibilities and development trends that I talk about in my City Talk column today: “Canal District” gives Savannah room to grow.

First, the full image of a large area envisioned by Sottile & Sottile (click for a pretty huge version), followed by three details from the map.

In the rendering of the intersection of Gwinnett and Stiles, you can see an image of the magnificent late 19th century waterworks. The building beyond that would be an imagined image of the front facade of either the new arena or adjacent building for parking, offices, etc.

Right now, the old trestle at Boundary Street and Louisville Road is not open to the public at all — but look at how beautifully it would serve connectivity throughout the area.

The arena is obviously a really expensive proposal, but much of the rest of this vision would be fairly straightforward to implement — and quite cheap compared to the cost of other major infrastructure improvements, like road building and repaving.

None of this would happen overnight, and I’d love to see a series of open house/workshop sessions for all the stakeholders in the area.

So much potential. So many possibilities.

Folks keep talking about the site as if it’s way over there somewhere.

But it’s just, you know, right there on the other side of U.S. Highway 17. In the column, I note all the development that we’ve seen just east of that site over the last couple of decades.

Here’s a map that I’ve generated using the Savannah Area Geographical Information System. To the right, in purple, is the current Civic Center site, which consists of the MLK Arena, the Johnny Mercer Theatre, and various other spaces. To the left, you can see land already owned by the city outlined in blue. At the corner of Stiles and Gwinnett, there’s a beautiful old municipal building that certainly won’t be demolished. The city also owns a couple of smaller parcels across Stiles and has tried to purchase a couple of parcels just south of the blue polygon too.

Vehicular traffic might not be able to access any of that Westside land directly via Boundary Street, but the expressway is elevated, which could certainly allow access for pedestrians and bicycles.

In a couple months, voters will be asked to approve a new round of SPLOST to start when the current collection ends. I’d say that vote has a very uncertain future.

Because of a steep drop in tax revenue during the recession and because some monies were shifted to other projects, the city has just $20 million for a new arena, which would likely cost $120-140 million.

In November, voters countywide — and especially those in the city limits — will have to decide if they want to vote to fund the same major project that they voted to fund in 2006.

The politics are tricky, to say the least.

And the politics have been made trickier by the dithering over potential sites. Of the four sites under consideration, two have never really made any sense to me at all. Rebuilding on the current site is not the worst idea in the world, but has some major drawbacks that I discussed in a recent column.

If we could acquire the land, the westside site chosen about a decade ago under City Manager Michael Brown has always seemed a perfect location for a variety of big reasons.

Now this from Eric Curl’s City Council members tour potential arena sites:

Marty Johnston, the cityâ€s director of special projects, informed members of the city council of the discovery while they took a bus tour to the four locations being considered for the facility on Wednesday afternoon.

Johnston said that staff found out about two weeks ago that the property the city owns north of Gwinnett Street along the Springfield Canal can accommodate an arena the size of a much-praised 11,500-seat facility in Gwinnett County. Up until then, city staff had said they would need to acquire more property, which would have likely required extensive environmental mitigation.

Now, I have no idea why it should take so many years for someone to look at the amount of acreage and the layout of the westside site (sort of northwest of Chatham Steel just west of downtown) and determine that we already have enough land. It seems borderline ridiculous, frankly, that the city didn’t know how much land was needed.

But with that issue apparently off the table, one has to wonder why the city would be considering any site that it doesn’t already own.

And if the choice is to build a new arena on land that was acquired years ago specifically for that purpose or to build a new arena on the site of the current one, then we’re pretty close to a final call. It seems clear to me that the best call is the westside site so that the current arena site and its huge parking lot can go back into private hands and that we can reopen some long-closed streets.

If city officials commit to that westside site, they will rebuild a little lost trust with some West Savannah residents and they’ll still have well over two months to build their case for another round of SPLOST.

Despite the relatively clear explanations for the lack of money to build the arena or the police headquarters, weâ€re going to keep hearing people ask, “What happened to the money for the arena?”

Itâ€s pretty simple: because of the deep recession and the way that the SPLOST monies were divided up via the agreement in 2006, we never came even close to raising enough money to pay for a new arena and all the other promised projects.

From Eric Curl’s Savannah arena site consideration spurs outcry in today’s Savannah Morning News:

[Chester] Ellis, the Carver Heights neighborhood leader, said he did not expect the revenue raised from the current sales tax to cover the total cost of the arenaâ€s construction, but he thought it would be enough to get 50 percent done or at least start construction.

“What happened to the money?” he asked.

See above.

Eric’s article is frustrating on a number of levels, but it sure isn’t his fault.

In the article, officials try to downplay the political reality that many urbanites and residents of West Savannah voted for the last SPLOST (the 1 percent sales tax for infrastructure approved in 2006) largely because the city planned to build the new arena off West Gwinnett Street.

Now, years later, with the city not having acquired enough land for that site, there’s still a question about the new arena’s location. A few comments:

• In part this delay is to blame on the turmoil of the failed experiment of Rochelle Small-Toney’s tenure as Savannah City Manager. Under any sort of organized leadership, a proposed site would have been selected at least two years ago.
• The city is doing itself no favors to be debating and still studying various sites in the months before the next SPLOST vote.
• The article notes that city officials would like to see a deal for dividing revenues from the next round of SPLOST to favor the new arena project in the same way that the current, about-to-end SPLOST collection favored the new county jail. This seems like a fair approach, but it might not be the most politically expedient one.

A few thoughts that I’ve shared before about various sites that are apparently still under consideration:

• The West Gwinnett site: This is still the best option, by far, as far as I’m concerned. The parcels are undeveloped and accessible via several significant roadways. With appropriate paths the site would be accessible to pedestrians and cyclists coming from or going to downtown hotels, restaurants, etc. I doubt that we’ll see the surge in West Savannah investment that some anticipate, but we will likely see some. Also — and this is critical — many voters were led to believe that the Gwinnett site was a done deal; choosing another site will be seen by some as a breach of trust and make it harder for SPLOST to be reapproved this fall. Of course, we have to get the rest of the land somehow.
• Savannah River Landing: This is obviously a site that could work for a lot of similar reasons to the Gwinnett site: proximity to downtown, the presence of roadways, the chance to spur development, etc. But don’t we want to have as much private development as possible at SRL? Won’t the cost of land acquisition be prohibitive given how much money the current owners have tied up in the site?
• Rebuilding in place: This is not a lousy idea, but there are a couple of major negatives. First, if the current arena site is demolished, we could see a massive return of valuable land to the private sector and to the tax rolls. We could also recreate some of the destroyed street grid, add to the downtown population, and improve commerce and access in the southwest quadrant of the Landmark Historic District. Also, if we rebuild a new arena on the footprint of the old one, we’ll likely have two years when we will have no arena at all for community events, concerts, etc. Even if Johnny Mercer Theatre is left intact, it’s hard to imagine that major construction right next door would not severely limit its use.
• A site north of Bay Street on the west side of MLK: Given the current owners in the area (SCAD, the USPS, a hotelier, etc.) and the likelihood of dramatically more development on the west end of River Street when several nearby hotels are completed (including the one at the old Plant Riverside), this seems like a poor and expensive choice that would displace tens of millions in private development.

This fall, we’ll be voting on a new round of SPLOST — a 1 percent sales tax to fund a specific list of projects compiled by the County and by each of Chatham’s municipalities.

Given the politics, I’d say that there’s a very good chance that the referendum will fail.

I can already tell I’m going to pull my hair out trying to answer the same questions over and over, so consider this short post my opening salvo .  . .

Sales taxes have an inherently regressive quality, but SPLOST is virtually the only mechanism for the community to make significant investments in infrastructure. It’s worth keeping in mind that somewhere around 1/3rd of the total tax is paid by visitors. There are some SPLOST projects that have been delayed dramatically over the years and some that haven’t been completed at all, but the majority have been delivered as promised. Click here to see a full list of Chatham County’s promised projects and their status.

Of course, the 2008-2014 SPLOST collection fell far, far short of original estimates because the economy tanked. Combined with other shortfalls, the City of Savannah’s planned arena and new police headquarters could not be funded.

So it looks like Savannah will seek $120 million from the next SPLOST to cover the new arena that we desperately need. Will city voters approve a list that has the same major project that they approved back in 2006?

I wrote about the problem in a column earlier this year:

Whether the vote is held this year or next year, elected and appointed officials are definitely going to have some explaining to do.

Citizens will be repeatedly asking why major projects from the 2006 list havenâ€t been finished or, in some cases, even started.

There are fairly straightforward answers for the inevitable questions, but thereâ€s so much cynicism right now that many voters simply arenâ€t going to accept the explanations.

Voters†frustrations about incomplete SPLOST projects are due primarily to the protracted economic downturn.

When voters went to the polls in 2006, officials estimated the tax would raise $445 million countywide.

After a deep recession and a weak recovery, SPLOSTâ€s final haul will be about 15 percent less than that, something like $379 million.

But the real effects of the downturn went much deeper.

Since Chatham Countyâ€s new jail was guaranteed full funding, the rest of the municipalities†project lists had to be trimmed by closer to 20 percent.

Even that number understates the problem, since some major projects were never expected to be fully funded by SPLOST dollars in the first place.

The city of Savannahâ€s proposed new public safety headquarters and new arena, for example, would have needed tens of millions from other revenue sources beyond the 1 percent sales tax.

The economic decline decimated those additional revenues too.

The city hasn’t done itself any favors with the questionable delays and occasional backtracking in plans for the new Cultural Arts Center, which was approved in 2006 and is one of the projects that will be completed, in part by diverting a portion of the money budgeted for other projects.

Despite the relatively clear explanations for the lack of money to build the arena or the police headquarters, we’re going to keep hearing people ask, “What happened to the money for the arena?”

It’s pretty simple: because of the deep recession and the way that the SPLOST monies were divided up via the agreement in 2006, we never came even close to raising enough money to pay for a new arena and all the other promised projects.

It would be possible, but quite difficult, for the city to pay for a new arena without a new round of SPLOST.