Voters Approve Continuation of Franklin County eSPLOST

Franklin County’s school board will now begin planning some major projects for the Franklin County School system now that voters have said yes to continuing the education special purpose local option sales tax for another five years.

Despite a concerted effort by opponents to stop the next eSPLOST, just over 64% of Franklin County voters approved the e-SPLOST by a vote of 3,158 yes to 1,764 no.

Most of the opposition to the next e-SPLOST came from the Royston area where Royston city officials and local businessmen are concerned about the possibility of Royston Elementary school being moved outside the city limits.

Under the new eSPLOST, the current school board will begin the engineering and planning phases of building a new Royston Elementary.

Royston Mayor David Jordan and the City Council however, say they can’t get a straight answer from the school board as to where the new school will be built.

“We can’t get a confirmation of what they plan to do,” Jordan said earlier last month. “There’s a plan to build a whole new school outside the City, and the concern we have is, is this going to be outside the city, but we can’t a guarantee about anything. There is a concern from local merchants. They were talking about the eSPLOST but this is a decision by the School Board and we think it would be a disaster to go forward with a plan that might mean it would move the school outside the city limits.”

Jordan says the City has already allocated eight acres adjacent to the existing school for the new school, but he said they have heard rumors the new school might be built in Franklin Springs.

School Superintendent Dr. Ruth O’Dell said, however, it’s too early to know where the new school will be built because construction won’t even begin until sometime after 2021.

“There’s no decision because nothing has been done to determine the feasibility of keeping the school where it is,” O’Dell said. “Nobody has made any kind of decision to move it. It has not happened and won’t happen on this e-SPLOST. Towards the end of this e-SPLOST will be some planning, but that will require another whole e-SPLOST.”

Towards the end of this new eSPLOST, the School Board plans to notify the State to take Royston Elementary and Carnesville Primary offline.

That, O’Dell said, will generate funds from the state to go towards building a new wing on to Carnesville Intermediate with a view towards consolidating Carnesville Intermediate and Carnesville Primary back into one elementary school.

That will also begin the process of investigating the best location for the new Royston Elementary School.

Aside from the Royston Elementary school issue, revenue from the e-SPLOST passed Tuesday will primarily be used to build a new Career Academy at the high school as well as to continue to upgrade the technology at all of the schools in the system.