Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Sales Taxes Extended

Rather surprised at the very light turnout at tonight's city council meeting, especially since sales taxes, always a hot button issue, were on the agenda. The audience consisted of less than 6 people.  Members of the council stated several times that extending the taxes had been discussed a number so far this year and had even been figured into this year's budget. However, the half a dozen or so people I spoke with this week knew nothing about the proposed extensions and the Chamber of Commerce had not polled its members on the topic.

After some discussion, the council voted to eliminate the sunset clause for both taxes, meaning both will continue indefinitely unless council chooses to revisit them, which will likely only happen if enough residents of Carbondale contact them.. The vote was closer than I expected with Councilmen Loos and Grant, Councilwoman Harvey and Mayor Henry voting yes and Councilmen Doherty and Kang and Councilwoman Bradshaw voting no.

I was interested to learn that, due to the way the original ordinance had been written, the CCHS bond tax would not have sunseted. Instead, since the bonds had been paid off, the money from the tax would have continued to go into the general school funds until the ordinance was changed.


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