Marty writes in FFAF…

A total of 3762 City of Decatur voters turned out at the polls on Tuesday. That’s about 28% of active voters. This is a little higher than usual for a Decatur municipal election. But if you drill down the numbers a little it gets more interesting.

Of the voters who turned out, 3748 (99.6%) voted on the Sunday Sales referendum.

However, only 2931 of the 3762 (78% of voters) voted on the E-SPLOST question and only 3058 of the 3748 (81.5%) voted in the uncontested Commissioner At Large race (including write-ins).

Thus, we can estimate that about 700 Decatur voters (nearly 1 in 5 who showed up at the polls on Tuesday) showed up only to vote for the Sunday Sales referendum.

The question seems to be not “will Sunday alcohol sales pass?” but “by how much?”

Patch reported on its live blog that with 3 of 7 precincts reporting, Decatur was skewing 90%/10% in favor of Sunday Alcohol Sales.

So, will Decatur post the largest “Yes” number?  According to AJC.com, thus far many metro cities are posting around an 80% “yes” vote.   No one else is up at 90%.

By Katie Pedersen and Kyle Williams

On Tuesday, November 8^th, we have a chance to vote “Yes” for City Schools of Decatur.  Tomorrow, Decatur voters decide whether to continue the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) by answering “Yes” or “No” to a very long, legalese question that begins “Shall a special one percent sales and use tax for educational purposed continue to be imposed in DeKalb County for not longer than 20 quarters, beginning July 1, 2012, to raise not more than $645,000,000 in the aggregate. . . .”

First passed in 1997, SPLOST provides a means for school systems to meet capital improvement needs through the collection of a 1% sales tax.  SPLOST is not a new or additional tax – it is already a part of our 7% sales tax.  But the sales tax will expire in the next few months unless we ‘Locally Opt’ to keep it in place.

Since its inception, SPLOST has funded 38% of all capital projects for CSD, bringing in more than $34 million dollars. Thanks to SPLOST, CSD has:

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