Bauxite residents voted against raising their city's sales tax by half a percentage point in Tuesday's election.
With its one and only precinct reporting, the unofficial results were:
Against 53
For 47
Because the vote failed, the town's sales tax will remain 1.5 percent.
The town was looking to increase the tax in order to replace sewer grinder pumps and fund maintenance on the wastewater treatment plant. The sewer grinder pumps are devices that carry wastewater from about 240 Bauxite homes and businesses to the plant.
Since 2007, repairs for the pumps have been funded by a $10 monthly fee paid by residents as part of their water bills.
Bauxite resident and former Alderman Deborah Purifoy led the charge against the proposal. She said she worried that the extra money raised from the tax would not have been used the way it was intended because it would have gone into the town's general fund instead of a designated fund.
"He's being very irresponsible," she said of Mayor Johnny McMahan. "I just don't seeing anything good coming from this."
But McMahan said the tax would have saved residents money.
Purifoy filed a complaint March 24 against McMahan with the Arkansas Ethics Commission, which is looking into her claims that he used city resources to campaign for the tax.
McMahan, however, said: "I really didn't expend any effort to get it passed. I put it out there and let the public decide."
He considers the ethics complaint "ridiculous. I thought it was just a cheap way to harass me, something to take my time and take my mind off running the city of Bauxite."
Metro on 05/21/2014