SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) – Savannah City Council is wrapping up business for the year Tuesday, and still has some important work to do.
This includes drawing up the six districts that make up the City of Savannah.
These changes are very minimal, but every 10 years, they look at the census data and have to account for any population growth in the city.
Tuesday, council will have the first reading of the proposed boundary changes. The public is welcome to attend this meeting and other upcoming meetings to share their thoughts on the proposed changes.
For some, like District 3, there will be no changes at all. But the highest population growth came in District 1, which will have the biggest changes. All targeted at getting the same population size in each of the six districts across the city.
“Every single person that is in our city, we want to make sure that their voice is heard so we take this block by block by block throughout the city to make sure we get this right. Our planning commission has done an outstanding effort setting it up in place and making sure it was well read, well studied, well formulated and keeping neighborhoods together,” said District 4 Alderman Nick Palumbo.
Tuesday is just the first reading. They will have a couple of more before the plan is approved. Then it will head to Atlanta to be signed off by the legislature.
This will be important as city elections will take place in November of 2023. This will decide how you vote with aldermanic districts on the ballot soon. Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. to begin the process.
Another crucial day to finally approve the distribution of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from the Local Option Sales Tax known as LOST.
This agreement has gone back and forth from Chatham County and the eight municipalities for months. But Tuesday we could get one step closer to a final agreement.
During their council meeting they will look to approve the agreement. Time is ticking to get this agreement done. The deadline for approval is at the end of the year – now less than two weeks away.
The last offer from the municipalities would give the county 24 percent of the money in year one, increasing to 31 percent by 2027.
In Friday’s commission meeting, the county made a new counter offer, with 25 percent going to the county in the first year, increasing to 31 percent one year sooner, in 2026.
That is the offer that the Savannah City Council will have to decide on Tuesday.
“I anticipate we will have a lot of healthy discussion over it but really it is coming to a close and for me personally I want to make sure that we do everything in our power that this important sales tax does not lapse and we don’t have a tax apocalypse on our hands in 2023,” Alderman Palumbo said.
According to Chatham County Chairman Ellis, the current deal on the table still prevents further property tax increases.
The city of Savannah will decide and if all of the municipalities agree, it would go back to the county chairman to sign off on. We will be keeping a close eye on this throughout the day.
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