Closing out last night’s Decatur City Commission meeting, Mayor Bill Floyd took a moment to follow up on some of his comments from last week, when he presented the commission with a resolution concerning Georgia’s 2012 transportation referendum, which would mirror a recent Fulton Mayors’ (sans Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed) proposal.

Floyd relayed to the room that since the last commissioner’s meeting two weeks ago, the Fulton mayors had asked the DeKalb mayors to join their resolution – which stated that the County would only support a second transportation penny sales tax on top of the current MARTA penny, if Gwinnett, Cobb and Clayton County agreed to creating a regional transportation plan – instead of starting a parrellel effort in DeKalb.

The mayor mentioned that he had spoken with all the DeKalb mayors at this point, and all were on-board with his original resolution.

Though he didn’t confirm either way, it sounded like the DeKalb mayors would probably take the Fulton mayors up on their offer.  If a joining of forces does come to pass, the mayors in the two counties plan to hold a press conference at the Georgia Capitol to announce their decision.

Stay tuned.

The already tough job of convincing Atlanta’s outer metro counties of supporting a 1-cent sales tax to support transportation projects just got harder, if not damn near impossible.

From the SaportaReport…

In a media advisory that I just received, it states that the “Fulton County Mayors from the north to the southern end of the county, have banded together to express their opposition to a proposed one-penny sales tax for transportation that voters in the metro region will have the option of approving under House Bill 277.

The biggest reason for their opposition? Fulton County already is paying a penny sales tax to support MARTA. Their concern is that if the tax passes, Fulton County would be paying two cents for transportation with no assurance from the rest of the region that it would support metro Atlanta’s largest transit system.

DeKalb’s mayors, including Decatur’s Bill Floyd, have yet to take a formal position on a potential second penny sales tax that would support metro transportation projects.