Amendment Five

Please be aware of the referendum questions that will be on the ballot this election. One in particular, Amendment Five, is of great importance to us in Hall County. I am typically very wary of constitutional amendments and will only vote in favor of those which I have studied in depth. Amendment Five is summarized best by President Pro Tem of the State Senate, Butch Miller:

“Amendment Five would authorize fair allocation of sales tax proceeds to local school districts. Impacting counties with independent school districts, Amendment 5 would allow for E-SPLOSTS to be called where the systems representing a majority of the students have a revenue sharing agreement or the proposed E-SPLOST outlines revenue distribution proportional to the number of students in each system.”

This means that in Hall County, E-SPLOST dollars would be evenly distributed between the City of Gainesville School System, Buford City School System and Hall County School System on a per-pupil basis.

Currently, Buford has about 350 students within Hall County, Gainesville has 8,500 and Hall County has 27,000.

I hope that you will consider this information when casting your ballot during early voting or on November 6.

Your friend,

Mark Pettitt