As Crawford County officials prepare to finalize the budget for 2014, administrators must decide what changes, if any, will be made to the distribution of proceeds from a 1 percent county sales tax to the departments considered part of “public safety.”
Crawford County’s 1 percent sales tax was implemented Oct. 1, 1999, according to Finance and Administration Department records. The tax ordinance must be renewed every eight years and will next appear on the Crawford County primary election ballot in 2015.
Crawford County Judge John Hall, who credited the tax with helping the county cope with expansion over the past several decades, said the tax kept several of the county’s essential institutions afloat.
“Right now, it basically operates the jail,” Hall said. “What most people don’t realize is that [the county has] increased by 30,000 people over the last 30 years.”
Crawford County is one of 73 counties in Arkansas that have implemented a county sales tax (only Monroe and Saline counties lack a similar tax). According to data from the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, Carroll and Faulkner counties tie for the lowest county sales tax at 0.5 percent, while Chicot County levies the highest at 3 percent.
Like the statewide 6.5 percent sales and use tax, Crawford County’s 1 percent tax is first collected by the Finance and Administration Department. Half the proceeds from the 1 percent county tax then go back to the county, while the other half is divided among the county’s cities according to population. Crawford County Treasurer Beverly Pyle said 2012 sales generated about $1.2 million for the county in 2013.
Crawford County’s budget for its general fund was slightly more than $9 million for 2013, plus another $4.2 million for its road budget, Pyle said.
At the county level, proceeds from the 1 percent tax are divided among the Road Department, which receives 45 percent; the county general fund, which receives 15 percent; and those departments associated with public safety, which receive the remaining 40 percent.
In addition to the Crawford County jail, funds earmarked for public safety also support the county’s coroner, sheriff, juvenile probation program, the county’s district court, the Crawford County Department of Emergency Management, the county’s hazardous-materials program and 10 separate rural fire departments.
Hall said a proposal to build a new county jail will likely be put before voters on the May 2014 primary election ballot.
“The jail was built 30 years ago,” Hall said. “It’s overcrowded, it’s not the right design anymore. We’ve been written up numerous times [by the Arkansas Department of Correction] because it doesn’t meet state standards.
“We’re going to address the discrepancies,” Hall said. “There are some things we can do. But we can’t add square footage, and we can’t change the design.”
Crawford County Justice of the Peace Lloyd Cole said the 1 percent sales tax is essential to keeping the county’s budget workable.
“It takes everything we have just to get the budget to balance,” Cole said. “Last year, it wasn’t even enough, and we had to increase the millage one mill. As far as I’m concerned, [the sales tax] is part of our fundamental revenue.”
The Crawford County Quorum Court’s budget meeting is scheduled for Nov. 12.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 10/29/2013