LITTLE ROCK — There will be a special City Council meeting at 5 p.m. today at City Hall to discuss options concerning a possible sales-tax increase.
Searcy Mayor Belinda La-Force said there are several reasons that merit a sales-tax increase for Searcy residents, including the inability to retain experienced public-safety employees.
It is "largely due to wage scale" and "the fact that we lose employees to other public-safety agencies within a close physical proximity of Searcy that have a higher wage scale ... making it difficult for us to attract and retain personnel in the Police and Fire departments," LaForce said.
Another justification for a tax increase is "the lack of funding available for capital equipment and improvements citywide,"she said, adding that the city was only able to fund four vehicles at a cost of approximately $93,285 with$2,451,935 in unfunded capital requests from the Police, Fire, Street, Parks and Recreation, Sanitation, Code Enforcement and Engineering departments.
LaForce said a third major issue for proposing a sales-tax increase is street resurfacing.
"The Street Department does not have enough revenue to fund major improvements for street projects, and the city's general funding is not adequate to fund all the other departments and the street at its current level," she said.
Searcy's first sales-tax issuewas in 1994 at 0.5 percent, which removed the five mills of City General Property Tax and is still in place for general improvements and operation of the city. However, Searcy does receive a percentage of White County's 1 percent sales-tax issue that was passed in 1989.
Residents pay only 0.8 of a mill of property tax, which is designated to police and fire pension and 1.2 mills of road taxes. All other property taxes paid in the city limits go toward county services and public schools.
The only other city sales-tax request was in 2005, a ninemonth, short-term, 1 percent sales tax after the Central Fire Station and Courts building burned. The money was used to construct a new fire station, which will be completed by the end of June, LaForce said.
That tax was completed in June 2006. It raised $3.7 million, which is being used to construct the new station. It also went to purchase a new fire engine and furnishings for the station. LaForce said the city should have approximately $800,000 left over from the tax that will be added to the city reserves.
The current level of sales taxes within the city of Searcy is 6 percent in state sales taxes (with 3 percent going off groceries in July), 1.5 percent county tax and 0.5 percent city tax, totaling 8 percent sales tax for Searcy. The percentage of sales tax on groceries in Searcy will be 5 percent in July.
"Compared with other cities in the state, our percentage is and will continue to belower than many other cities," LaForce said. "The city needs a 1-cent additional tax at this time to meet our growth requirements for the future, but we are considering a partial sunset at some point."
Some issues LaForce foresees needing to be addressed in the future include: safety and security of citizens and city personnel; the risk of the city losing its ISO class 2 fire rating, which will cause an increase in insurance premiums; escalating crime; cutting back or closing city services and programs; funding healthcare and retirement systems; increasing fuel costs; consistent street paving program, construction of new arterials and widening of certain streets for better traffic flow; land growth, annexation,
population, new facilities and property acquisition for expansion; and upgrading technology.
Three Rivers, Pages 55, 56 on 06/21/2007