Commission approves projects for SPLOST

After several votes, lengthy debate and public cajoling at the June 10 meeting, the Pike County commission decided which projects will go before voters in the upcoming SPLOST referendum.Commissioners accepted county projects recommended by the Citizens Advisory Task Force. Those are $3.5 million for a judicial complex/courthouse, $400,000 for the recreation authority, $75,000 each for the agribusiness authority and library, $600,000 for roads and $150,000 for animal control.Officials are proposing a renewed six-year SPLOST that could generate an estimated $6 million. Eighty percent of that will go to Pike and the remaining 20% will be divided among the cities. Pike is expected to garner $4.8 million and the cities would divide $1.2 million.Commissioners previously gave informal approval to a list of projects that did not exactly mirror recommendations made by the CATF. They left the issue of animal control undecided.Last Wednesday the board initially voted to exclude an animal shelter from the proposed projects, straying further from the task force’s recommendations.A disappointed Bobby Blalock threatened to resign as task force chairman if commissioners didn’t follow its recommendations. Blalock is the former mayor of Zebulon.