FAYETTEVILLE — The Washington County Tea Party on Tuesday formally announced its opposition to extending the city’s 1 cent sales tax for 10 years.
Voters will determine next week whether to renew the tax, which accounted for $15.4 million or roughly 13 percent of the city’s overall $118.5 million budget this year.
AT A GLANCE
Sales Tax Election
Early voting began Tuesday to determine whether Fayetteville’s 1-cent sales tax for general operations and capital improvements will continue another 10 years.
Votes may be cast at the County Clerk’s Office on the third floor of the county courthouse at College Avenue and Dickson Street in Fayetteville.
Voting hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays through Monday.
Source: Staff Report
Jeff Oland, chairman of the Washington County Tea Party, said the city never should have gotten to the point where it became dependent on sales tax revenue.
In a news release Tuesday, Oland criticized “scare tactics to frighten people into voting for this” citing the city’s focus on having to cut as many as 93 Police and Fire department jobs if the extension fails.
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“How can something as important as public safety be funded by a temporary tax?” Oland asked. “I think that’s mismanagement of government.”
Oland said the group has 100 members and he said more people come to meetings and are on the organization’s mailing list.
He said local government can stand to cut its spending in a tight economic climate just as many residents have had to do, but he offered no plan of where $15.4 million could be trimmed from the city’s budget.
Oland said eliminating the trails program would be a starting point.
“I don’t know how city government operates,” he said. “I don’t know all of the programs that are reliant on this tax. It is unreasonable to expect even one person to know everything about this. I am a volunteer, but what I do know is we’re overspent.”
Paul Becker, city finance director, said the city’s budget for trail construction each year ranges between $1.2 million and $1.5 million, less than one-tenth of the revenue officials expect to lose if the sales tax ends.
Becker acknowledged there are costs to maintain the trails each year, but said those costs are difficult to pinpoint.
The overall parks maintenance budget for 2011 was $672,659.
Becker said he doesn’t expect people to become experts on how the city spends its money and said there are ample opportunities for residents to review the budget online and through budget-setting sessions before the City Council.
Becker acknowledged Oland’s point that the city is more reliant on sales tax revenue than it used to be.
Before 1993, when voters approved the city’s 1-cent sales and use tax, a greater percentage of the budget was based on property tax revenue and franchise fees, he said. As the population grew and residents demanded more services, Becker said the budget expanded to provide more services to more people.
“You have to consider the (population) growth over the years and the additional demands for services by the citizens,” Becker said. “I’m sure back 20 years ago, we didn’t have a trail program, but this is something the citizens want. We didn’t have the number of roads to maintain. We certainly didn’t have the number of parks.
“As it grows, it takes money to maintain.”
Oland criticized city officials Tuesday for the speed with which they’ve taken a sales tax election to voters.
The council did not set an official date for the election until Aug. 2, while the tax is not set to expire until June 2013.
“They rushed this,” Oland said. “And, now, if this gets voted down, they’re going to be in worse shape than if they hadn’t tried to slide this through in this way.”
City officials, including the mayor and Becker, have said the sales tax election was timed the way it was to give voters an opportunity to weigh in on extending a critical money source for city before other potential tax increases are put to state and county voters next year.