For the first time in nearly a year, all five seats on the Demorest City Council will be filled. Unofficial results from Tuesday’s election show Jim Welborn and Shawn Allen as the top two vote-getters in the seven-person race.
Welborn received 244 votes and Allen received 236. The next closest was Keith Andrews with 221 votes and Amanda Crump Mason with 217. (For complete race results, click here.)
The special election was held to fill seats vacated by Bruce Harkness and Sean Moore. Harkness left in March to run for the Habersham County Commission. Moore is moving out of the city.
Election results are incomplete and unofficial until they are certified by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
SPLOST VII
Countywide, Habersham voters overwhelmingly passed SPLOST VII by a near three-to-one margin. Unofficial election returns show 14,972 voters voted in favor of SPLOST while 4,809 voted against the penny on the dollar tax.
The special local option sales tax was billed as a “renewal” of the current one-cent sales tax. It is, in fact, not a continuation, but rather a new tax that county officials project will raise over $47 million in the next six years.
The current SPLOST VI expires at the end of this year. With the new SPLOST approved, the county sales tax will remain at 7%.
Money from SPLOST VII will be used to pay for county projects, such as resurfacing and repairing roads and bridges (specifically Tom Born, Tommy Irwin, and Antioch Church roads and Habersham Mill and West Glade Creek bridges), landfill equipment, a $4 million central base station for Habersham Emergency Services, new ambulances, sheriff and fire equipment, a massive update to the E-911 radio system, and a new animal shelter.
The county will distribute $13.6 million in SPLOST funds to Habersham’s municipalities for various projects within the cities. Cornelia is set to receive the most funding with $5.29 million. The town of Tallulah Falls will receive the least at $220,021.
