Austin: Toll Road Won't Happen

A toll road will not be built in Paulding County, officials told a standing-room only crowd that packed into the Wayne Kirby Community Center at Burnt Hickory Park.

“There is no toll road,” County Commission Chairman David Austin said, garnering a round of applause. “I know there are conspiracy theories in the crowd. I’m the county commission chairman. The buck stops here.”

Austin said that a report released in 2009 stated the road that the Western Connector would be built. The proposed road would run through Paulding County hitting north of the Red Top Mountain Road exit in Emerson and down in Henry County. However, local officials cannot build the road without a Joint Development Authority, which the county currently does not have. Commissioners are expected to take up a resolution at their next meeting that would create a JDA, but Austin said he expects that resolution to be rescinded.

“If you’re going to look at someone, look at me,” Austin said. “If you’re going to blame someone, blame me.”

In response, a member of the audience shouted, “We can do that.”

Austin said several times during the meeting that there will be no toll road.

“I’m telling you today, there is no toll road,” he said. “I’m not working on it. I’m not leading the effort. It’s over. It’s done. There is no toll road.”

Besides the local government, state and federal governments also can initiate road projects.

Will Booker, who lives in the Burnt Hickory Community, said he thought Austin belittled everyone in the audience by mentioning conspiracy theories several times.

“It’s my impression now that the state’s going to pick up where they left off,” Booker said. “It may be a conspiracy theory, but I think that was their plan all along.”

Booker and his wife moved from Marietta to Paulding County last year, and he said he was devastated when he heard about the proposed toll road.

“I haven’t slept much since I heard about it,” he said.

State Representative Howard Maxwell attended the meeting and said the state doesn’t have $2 billion to fund the project. The priority right now is to widen Georgia Highway 92 from Douglas County to Cobb County. The state has cut approximately $3 billion from its budget since 2007, Maxwell said.

“We are struggling in the transportation department just to put money into projects that were on the books for years,” he said.

Also in attendance at the meeting was State Senator Bill Heath, who said that, while he can’t say with certainty that the project will never happen, the state currently doesn’t have the money to fund the project.

“Nothing happens fast,” Heath said. “It takes tons and tons of money. Is it likely to happen? No. But, I can’t promise that.”

When asked if residents can count on the Board of Commissioners to resist the state should officials with the Department of Transportation want to build the road, Austin said he wouldn’t pursue it but that it is “ugly business” to turn his back on a governor who gave the county money to build the airport terminal and the proposed reservoir.

“I don’t want to be nasty to the governor,” Austin said.

One resident replied with, “That’s a defeatist attitude.”

Another resident held up his tablet and told Austin he could play a YouTube video of Austin and Blake Swafford, executive director of the Paulding County Industrial Building Authority, pitching the idea to state officials. Austin said that he did go to Atlanta in 2011 to talk about the project with Gena Evans with the tolling authority and find out how it would work.

“I told her at that time this probably wouldn’t happen because we don’t have a Joint Development Authority,” Austin said.

Austin and Swafford on the Western Connector to Spaulding County officials in April, hoping to get them along with officials in Carroll, Bartow and other surrounding counties on board with the project. The issue also was at a Paulding County Industrial Building Authority meeting.

The 75-mile road would cost $2.9 billion to construct. The county spent $90,000-$100,000 on a feasibility study for the project.