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KVIII —NUMBER 98
county prepares for Dec. 15 sales tax vote
Opposition
fears growth
follows water
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff writer
“We’re really up the creek. And it’s
dry.”
Bebe Burkhardt laughs ruefully as
she relates the water situation at the
house she and her husband are build
ing in northeastern Forsyth County.
With the structure two-thirds com
plete, the Burkhardts called in well
diggers to p r :* *he water running. Like
most of n . county, homes off Ga. 369
near the Hall County lines, aren’t ser
viced by public water.
After digging more than 760 feet
through solid granite, well diggers hit
water a trickle that wouL yield
about five gallons an hour, or about
enough to flush a toilet once during
the same time period.
With a pump and a storage tank to
collect the flow, the completed well
will cost about SIO,OOO, Burkhardt
said. And still she and her family will
have to look to other sources to supply
adequate water for their retirement
home.
City and county officials say the
Burkhardts aren’t the only family
frustrated in efforts to secure private
sources of water. Two years of
drought have dried up many local
wells and caused the water table to
drop, officials say, and the increasing
number of wells needed to serve re
cent population influxes have made
the situation worse.
But all county residents don’t be
lieve the decreasing supply argu
ment, and they say their vote on Dec.
15 will be against a 1 percent sales tax
increase to pay for a countywide wa
ter system.
“I don’t think the water table has
dropped off that much,” said Kenneth
Grizzle, who lives in an area where
several other residents are complain
ing of dried up wells. “My well is 14
feet deep and there’s plenty of water
in it. We may have a problem in the
future, but I don’t think it will be until
the next century when we pump that
much water out of our system.”
Grizzle said families who can’t
reach water through a bored well
should try drilling to extend the well
shaft deeper and perhaps reach the
water table before they turn to a pub
lic utility system. The advantages of
private water supplies over public
utilities are worth the extra expense,
he added.
“I’ve had bitter experiences on sev
eral occasions with public utilities,
and I’d rather be independent,” Griz
zle said. “Once they get public water
lines, they’ll say we can’t have wells.
When they have a monopoly, they get
arrogant. A lot of people are moving
here from Atlanta, I assume to get
away from some of the things of the
big city, but they seem to want to
make this just like it is down there.”
Preventing growth is the core argu
ment for many county residents op
posed to the sales-tax-for-water pro
gram. But that opposition has
remained on an individual basis, ac
cording to local officials and sales tax
Please see OPPOSITION, page 2A
Hospital is cracking down
with up-front money policy
By Laura McCullough
Managing Editor
Area hospitals are getting tough
with patients who won’t pay their
bills. Now, those wanting non-emer
gency surgery will have to take care
of the costs before being admitted,
say hospital administrators.
Increasing revenue losses have
forced a change in pre-admission fi
nancing policies at Northeast Georgia
Medical Center in Gainesville, and a
similar revision is coming in January
at Lakeside Community Hospital in
Cumming.
Northeast Georgia now requires an
80 percent deposit, either self-paid or
guaranteed by insurance, before a pa
tient enters the hospital for elective
surgery, which is all surgery other
than emergency. The 20 percent bal
ance is due upon discharge. If the pa
tient has a history of bad debt, a 100
percent deposit is required prior to
admission.
“In the past three years our bad
debt has grown to $36 million that’s
tripled. It can’t continue,” said Cathy
Forsyth County News
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Water line installation may become a common sight if sales tax is approved
Bowers, spokesperson for Northeast
Georgia.
Northeast Georgia will conduct a fi
nancial assessment to determine the
cost upfront, said Bowers. “It won’t
be exact, because it varies by so many
things,” she said. “If the cost is over
we will refund the difference. I doubt
that will happen, though. We would be
more inclined to underestimate, than
to overestimate.”
The policy will not affect emergen
cy admissions. Also, the patient’s
physician will determine if the sur
gery can wait until finances are ar
ranged, said Bowers. The deposit is
for hospital costs only.
Lakeside Community Hospital is
taking a serious look at Gainesville’s
policy revisions. An SBOO deposit for
non-insured patients is now required
for elective surgery, said administra
tor Steve Hitt. However, changes are
in the works for 1988.
“We do have a lot of indigent care
and as this number gets larger there
are more problems,” said Hitt. “Hall
Please see HOSPITAL, page 11A
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1987-CUMMING, GA. 30130 80 PAGES 3 SECTIONS
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Randall Norton (left) and his brother Roger, who will be
tried at a later date, talk while waiting for a verdict in Randall's ag
gravated assault trial last week.
Staff Photo Kathryn L. Babb
Stiff Photo Kathryn L. Babb
Water plan goes to voters
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff writer
After years of dispute, Gumming
and Forsyth County officials are put
ting before voters a measure that
would use pennies to pay for water
lines.
A Dec. 15 referendum will let voters
decide whether to raise the existing 4
percent sales tax by another penny
on-the-dollar to pay for a spider-web
configuration of water lines that will
cover the county. The tax increase
would be in effect a maximum of five
years.
Local officials in February agreed
on va ?r line boundaries, which had
he’ . previous attempts to provide a
countywide water system, and this
summer began engineering plans for
a $22 million expanse of water lines
and pumping stations to meet water
demands past the year 2000.
If voters approve the special use
sales tax, area merchants will begin
collecting the extra penny on April 1,
and local coffers will receive the reve
nue on a monthly basis. According to
state law, the tax will cease after five
years or, if revenues pour in at a fast
er than anticipated rate, after $22 mil
lion has been collected.
The water lines financed by sales
tax revenues will transport water tc
areas of the county currently supplied
by wells that are drying up due tc
drought, local officials said. Public
water service is now confined to areas
supplied by the city of Cumming and
about 1,000 customers who have tied
on to the beginnings of a county water
system.
A $14.4 million share of the total rev
enue will go to the county’s water sys
tem to finance two loops of eight- and
12-inch trunk lines. The inner loop will
follow the city/county service area
along Bethelview and Dr. Bramblett
roads and Ga. 369.
Lines stretching along Ga. 369 dou
ble back on themselves, forming the
Please see WATER, page 3A
Officials say tax only option
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff writer
If Forsyth County residents vote
down a 1 percent sales tax to pay for
water system expansions, local offi
cials say there is no backup means of
funding the proposed countywide wa
ter program.
“I don’t know what the alternative
would be if the sales tax fails,” said
Forsyth County Commissioner James
Harrington. “It might be to just sort
of skimp along and let developers put
in lines where they want to if the peo
ple won’t authorize anything else.”
County commissioners and Cum
ming’s mayor and council began pro
moting the sales tax measure earlier
this fall as the funding mechanism for
a $22 million water system of trunk
lines and pumping stations across the
county. Voters will go to the polls Dec.
15 to decide the issue.
If the penny-per-dollar increase
passes, anticipated revenues of $3.5
million annually will fund the installa
tion of 200 miles of water lines during
Jury deadlocks in trial of man
charged in assault of marcher
By Lindsey Kelly
Staff writer
It was a case of half a dozen in one and
six in the other.
A Forsyth County jury was unable to
reach a verdict in the aggravated as
sault trial of Toccoa resident Randall
Norton this week, forcing Superior Court
Judge Frank Mills to declare a mistrial
after being informed that jurors were
irrevocably divided at six to six.
Norton was on trial for allegedly
throwing an object at Dennis Alfredo Ed
wards during the Jan. 24 “Brotherhood
March” in Cumming. Edwards, a black
man, was attempting to leave the scene
of the march when he was struck in the
head, suffering a severe skull fracture.
District Attorney Rafe Banks said
Wednesday he would bring the case to
trial again, possibly during the January
term.
Norton’s brother Roger was also
charged with aggravated assault in con
nection with the incident and will be
tried separately at a later date.
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REFERENDUM
AT A GLANCE
y Voters will decide Dec.
15 whether to approve a pen
ny-increase in the sales tax
to fund a 5-year expansion of
the water system throughout
the county.
s City and county officials
say the expansion is needed to
accommodate future water
demand, control growth, and
protect against drought.
s Opponents most often
cite the fear of uncontrolled
growth and revenue misman
agement as their main concerns
over the tax package.
a five year period. According to state
tax laws, when five years have ex
pired or when $22 million has been col
lected, the tax will cease.
If a majority of Forsyth County’s
13,340 voters turn thumbs down on the
sales tax increase, however, local of
ficials say the only alternative is to
continue with a five million gallon per
day city system and a conglomeration
of wells and spring water for county
residents.
If the tax is defeated, it cannot be
voted on again in the county for at
least one year.
Calling the special use sales tax the
“fairest tax possible,” city and coun
ty officials have repeatedly stressed
that other funding measures aren’t
feasible in the near future, although
they added that growing water de
mands in the next decade would force
development of a water system.
General obligation bonds, which
counties frequently use to finance
road or water projects, aren’t viable
Please see TAX, page 2A
A mistrial was declared shortly before
4 p.m. Wednesday after the jury had
been in deliberations for approximately
nine hours.
After five hours of deliberations, the
jury reassembled in the courtroom
around 10 a.m. Wednesday morning to
inform the court of a deadlocked vote. At
that time Mills urged jurors to keep try
ing to reach a decision, saying five hours
was not enough deliberation time to war
rant declaration of a mistrial “in a case
of this length and complexity.”
Wednesday morning the jury foreman
told Mills that “some people are not con
vinced beyond a reasonable doubt, in
their own minds, of the sufficiency of the
evidence.”
Norton’s attorney Martin Findley said
after a mistrial was declared that it was
“definitely a reasonable doubt case.”
“There was no physical evidence link
ing Randall to the crime except his pres
ence,” Findley said.
The state’s case suffered a major set-
Please see NORTON, page 11A
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