Not all of Henry County’s cities are on board with the transportation SPLOST idea being floated right now by the Board of Commissioners.

  Hampton is not supporting the plan because of the county’s failure to honor intergovernmental agreements relating to construction, improvement and maintenance of city roads, according to a letter from Mayor Steve Hutchison to board chair June Wood, in response to her invitation to a joint meeting on the issue. That meeting, scheduled for June 30, was cancelled just before the county suspended all public board meetings due to reports of staff exposure to COVID-19.

  Hutchison cited seven roads which he said were identified in the previous service delivery strategy (SDS) agreement as being solely the county’s responsibility for upkeep from 2010 to 2020: Hampton-Locust Grove Road, Old Ga. Hwy. 3, Elm Street, Old Ga. Hwy. 20, Steele Drive, South Hampton Road, and Richard Petty Blvd.

  “To date, not one of the seven roads have been repaired, maintained, or resurfaced by Henry County,” the mayor wrote in the letter, which was hand-delivered to the county June 26.

  Another reason mentioned by Hutchison for Hampton’s negative response regarding TSPLOST was the county’s position in the latest SDS negotiations, “which have gone on far too long and have placed the entire county in jeopardy,” he wrote. The Board of Commissioners voted unanimously June 30 to approve a joint SDS resolution.

  “Until an agreement is reached on all matters related to the 2020 SDS and the count remedies its failure to honor the 2010 SDS agreement with the city, it is unrealistic to ask myself and the council to trust any county proposal involving transportation, planning, funding, projects, etc., going forward,” the mayor wrote.

  Hutchison included in the letter the city’s list of six proposed roads in the 202 SDS agreement, four of which were included in the 2010 list. He then offered for comparison some statistics on the other cities’ involvement in the 2010 SDD agreement, through which the other three cities saw 27 out of 34 road projects addressed at a cost of nearly $40 million.

  “It should be obvious that the city of Hampton has long endured the short end of the stick for various county-initiated programs,” Hutchison concluded. “I request that as Henry County’s chair, you intervene directly to bring our present SDS negotiations to a fair and equitable resolution and that immediate steps are taken by Henry County to rectify their failure to honor their legally binding IGA with the city. Once those two issues have been rectified, the Hampton City Council and I will be happy to discuss TSPLOST projects.”

  The Board of Commissioners voted last month to move forward with the process of putting a referendum on the November ballot for a one-cent sales tax for transportation. An intergovernmental agreement with the cities is required to do that; otherwise, the referendum can only ask for three-quarters of a cent.