The Educational Special Purpose Local Options Sales Tax election early voting will continue through the Friday before the actual election on March 15. If the vote is approved, sales taxes will remain at the current rate for another five years.
“Liberty [County] voted on the ESPLOST nearly five years ago and approved the current 1 percent that we have primarily for school construction, renovations, repairs and related costs,” Superintendent Dr. Judy Scherer said. 
If the vote is not passed, the tax will expire at the end of the current five years, and taxpayers will pay one less cent in a sales tax, Scherer said.
“For the school system, that means we will not have money to purchase land, build new buildings, complete renovation and construction projects as needed,” Scherer said. “Participation is generally very low for special elections including SPLOST because people are not interested or motivated to come out and vote — they are happy with the status quo and this is not a major issue for them.”
In the past, the seven-cent sales tax has funded special projects including major renovations, parking lot pavement improvements and roofing projects. The Liberty County Pre-K Center was built completely by ESPLOST funds, Assistant Superintendent Jason Rogers said.
“It provides a valuable resource for our capital improvements,” Rogers said. “If we don’t have the proceeds there [ESPLOST] we have to go to local funds to accomplish [particular projects].”
The assistant superintendent said that the Liberty County School System has been criticized in the past for not giving out enough information, but due to certain ethics laws, educators and board members are allowed only to say so much about voting before it turns into lobbying.
Rogers said the school system hopes to host an informational session through the Liberty County Chamber of Commerce to educate voters further in early March. Dates are expected to be determined early next week.
“Normally, this is a very slow election. The turnout is moderate,” elections supervisor Ella Golden said, even with 23,0727 active voters in the county.
Golden said she isn’t sure why the turnout isn’t that great for the election, but hopes that more voters will come out this year than in previous years. Two locations are open for voting — one in Midway and one in Hinesville — she
said.
“They can come in and vote [Monday through Friday],” she said.  “We’d love to see them.”