Oconee County Schools has spent $72.4 million for projects covered by its current Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (ESPLOST VI), has made payments of $9.9 million against bonds sold to finance those projects, and has $14.4 million available in its ESPLOST VI account.
Spending of revenue from the tax continues for technology systemwide and for four projects: parking at Oconee County High School, paving at the system maintenance building, sports lighting at Oconee County High School, and classroom locks at North Oconee High School.
Oconee County Schools must make bond payments of $5.9 million each of the next three years to cover its spending on construction projects undertaken with the current ESPLOST and of $3.8 million each year after that through 2033.
The Board of Education is asking voters in the election on Tuesday to approve a renewal of the 1 percent sales tax to cover those bond payments as well as finance a series of projects, including construction of an auxiliary gym at North Oconee High School and replacing the original roof at Oconee County High School.
Turnout increased on the final two days of early voting for the Tuesday election, with 517 persons casting a ballot on Thursday and 802 voting on Friday, bringing the final vote tally, with mail absentee ballots included, to 3,833, or 11.3 percent of eligible voters.
Oconee County Schools and Board members have directed much of their information campaign about ESPLOST to school employees and to those it reaches through its multiple social media platforms, as it did in March of 2021, when 83.6 percent of the 1,924 voters who turned out (6.1 percent) approved the referendum.
ESPLOST renewal was the only item on the March 2021 ballot, while the ballot on Tuesday includes two statewide Public Service Commission races as well as city contests in Bishop, Bogart, and Watkinsville.
The local political scene was turned on its head on Tuesday, when Republican Marcus Wiedower, representing the county in the 121st House District, announced that he was stepping down immediately, leading to a called special election on Dec. 9.
Democrat Eric Gisler, a product manager and small business owner, and Republican Steven Strickland, with experience in telecommunications and technology, have declared their intent to qualify for the race. Both live in Oconee County.
Financial Reports
Oconee County Schools Chief Financial Officer Peter Adams provided details of ESPLOST VI spending and revenue receipts in his usual reports to the Board at its meeting on Oct. 20.
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| Adams With Tony McCullers, (Back To Camera) Chief Technology Officer Parrish in Background 10/20/2025 |
With the $9.9 million in bond payments already made, total spending for ESPLOST VI projects is $82.3 million.
Oconee County Schools collected $1.1 in ESPLOST revenue in August, up 2.7 percent from that same month a year ago.
To date, ESPLOST VI has generated $33.4 million, and Adams is projecting that ESPLOST VI will bring in an additional $15.1 million before it reaches its cap of $48.5 million, probably in December of next year.
Without voter approval of a renewal of the tax, collection would stop as soon as the cap is reached.
The ELOST VII referendum on the ballot authorizes continuation of the sales tax immediately after that cap for ELOST VI is reached.
Bond Payments
The bulk of the $14.4 million unspent in the ELOST VI account is being held in an escrow account to cover the upcoming bond payments.
Included is the $5.0 million unspent from ESPLOST VI itself as well as rolled over money from ESPLOST V, state funding, interest, and a General Fund transfer.
Scheduled bond payments for 2026 through 2033 total $36.9 million.
If the $15.1 million in expected collections from ESPLOST VI is added to that $14.4 balance, and no more projects are funded from ESPLOST monies, the total amount available to pay down the debt would be $29.5 million.
That means $7.4 million in debt would remain when ESPLOST VI expires.
The School Board in 2021 anticipated the possibility of drawing from the General Fund to pay off that debt and wrote the language for ESPLOST VI to allow for that possibility.
The Board also voted to extend bond payments to 2033, which will not be a problem if voters renew ESPLOSTs through those years. ESPLOSTs can only run for five years.
Reason For Extending Bond Payments
Only Board Chair Michael Ransom and Board Vice-Chair Amy Parrish on the current Board were on the Board when it made the decision to extend bond payments to 2033.
Parrish, speaking before Oconee County Democrats in October, said the Board hesitated in spreading out the bond payments because it didn’t want succeeding Board members “to have to deal with decisions that we had made.”
“But interest rates were so low, it just seemed to make financial sense in that circumstance to go ahead and do it that way,” she added.
Other Board members at the time were Chair Tom Odom, Kim Argo, and Tim Burgess, all of whom have stepped down from the Board.
General Fund
If voters do not approve renewal of ESPLOST, the Board likely will have to take money from the General Fund to retire the bonds.
The information campaign launched by the Board, and on its web site, does not emphasize this feature of the referendum, focusing instead on the list of projects to be funded by the new tax.
In response to a Frequently Asked Question on the web site, however, "If the ESPLOST is not renewed, the school district would potentially have to raise property taxes to pay debt which was previously approved by Oconee County voters and is currently outstanding.”
It is doubtful voters knew that debt from bond sales was going to extend to 2033, as it was not part of the language on the ballot that voters approved in March of 2021.
Adams, in his report to the Board on Oct. 20, said the General Fund Balance as of Sept. 30 was $49.4 million.
That figure is down from $53.8 million on Aug. 30 but up from $40.9 million on Sept. 30, 2024.
Adams has argued that Oconee County Schools needs to have a large cash balance to cover payroll and other expenses in the event of nonpayment of money from the state or from the county.
At the meeting on Oct. 20, Adams told the Board “We are still well positioned to meet our financial obligations for the fiscal year and should start to see the trend upwards with collection of local taxes.” Property taxes are due on Nov. 15.
New ELOST VI Spending
At the meeting on Oct. 20, the Board approved spending for six projects to be funded at least in part by the current ESPLOST VI.
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| Ransom 10/20/2025 |
The spending was: $30,795 for replacement of the HVAC unit at Colham Ferry Elementary School; $66,174 for interactive panels for the system’s elementary schools; $937,800 for six new buses; $61,290 for transportation radios; $23,800 for bleacher repair at North Oconee High School gym, and $14,773 for stormwater pipe at North Oconee High School.
Funding for the interactive panels was identified as from ESPLOST.
In each of the other cases, the Board was told: “This project will be paid for using ESPLOST and General Fund dollars.” No breakdown was given indicating how much money would come from each of the sources.
Also at the meeting on Oct. 20, the Board approved the Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Outlay Project Application to the Georgia Department of Education.
The application lists two projects.
First is a replacement of the HVAC and related systems at Oconee County Primary School at a cost of $987,680, with $457,872 to come from local monies and the remainder from the state.
The second item on the Capital Outlay Project Application is for replacement of the HVAC and related ductwork and of the roof at Oconee County Middle School, at a cost of $2,932,222, with $1,593,176 to come from local monies and the remainder from the state.
Both of those are listed on the school system web site as projects to be funded by ESPLOST VII if it is approved by voters on Tuesday.
Understanding ESPLOST Funding
In the ESPLOST VI report Adams presented to the Board on Oct. 20, he listed spending for the five major projects identified as funded by that tax: Classroom Additions at Colham Ferry Elementary School, High Shoals Elementary School, and Malcom Bridge Elementary School, the new Dove Creek Middle School, and the new Instructional Support Center.
He also listed Technology System Wide and White Fleet Vehicles, both of which were listed specifically (“network infrastructure and technology” and “transportation) in the March 2021 referendum voters approved for ESPLOST VI. The white fleet is made up of vehicles that are not buses.
Adams also listed Oconee County High School Parking Addition, Maintenance Paving, North Oconee High School Hardware (classroom locks), and Oconee County Sports Lighting.
These all fit under the language in the referendum of “additions to, renovations of, repairs to, improvements to, and equipment for existing educational, administrative and services buildings, properties, and facilities.”
The project list in Adams’s report to the Board seemed to be incomplete, based on my recollection of spending in recent years.
I asked Adams on Oct. 17, at the end of an in-person meeting, for a complete list of ESPLOST VI spending.
Exclusively Funded By ESPLOST VI
On Oct. 27, Adams provided me a summary of spending for ESPLOST VI, listing 15 categories totaling $61.5 million.
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| Butler 10/20/2025 |
Adams also showed $9.9 million in bond payments, bringing the total spending and encumbrances to date of $71.4 million and the current balance of unspent funds at $5.0 million.
Included in the spending category is $2.7 million in encumbrances for technology, the Oconee County High School parking, maintenance paving, North Oconee High School Stormwater repair and upgrade, the towable bucket trailer, school signage, transportation, the Colham Ferry Elementary School HVAC, and North Oconee High School bleacher repair.
After receiving the report from Adams, I went back through the minutes of School Board meetings from Jan. 1, 2023, when collection for ESPLOST VI began, to the Oct. 20 meeting, to try to understand Adams’s list.
Since Jan. 1, of 2023, the Board of Education approved 35 projects that were identified as either funded by ESPLOST and the General Fund or ESPLOST alone.
Another seven projects were similar to others with that listing, but no funding source was listed.
I could match up all but seven of the projects on my list with the list from Adams. All of the projects for which no funding source was listed matched up with the list from Adams, meaning they were funded by ESPLOST.
Adams said in an email on Oct. 31 that the unmatched items “included expenditures from previous ESPLOST programs, primarily ESPLOST V.”
Most of the amounts on the list from Adams were identical to those approved by the Board, meaning that ESPLOST, rather than General Fund, monies were used.
Adams also said that only $9.7 million of the $16.4 million cost of the Instructional Support Center came from ELOST VI, with the remainder coming from ELOST V or other monies in the ESPLOST account, while all $39.2 million spent on Dove Creek Middle School came from ESPLOST VI revenue.
ESPLOST–Not ELOST
Prior to the launching of the campaign for ESPLOST VII, Oconee County school officials and members of the Board referred to the tax as an Education Local Option Sales Tax (ELOST).
In a telephone conversation on Oct. 31, new Oconee County School Superintendent Melissa Butler said she does not know the history behind use of the term ELOST in Oconee County, but “it is more commonly referred to as ESPLOST.”
Butler said that when Debra Harden assumed the assignment as Interim School Superintendent in July, Harden called the lawyers representing Oconee County Schools who told her the terms “were interchangeable but the more commonly referred to term is ESPLOST.”
“That is why we just changed it back to that,” Butler said.
Voting on Tuesday is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the county’s four precinct locations.
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