Voters in Maumelle begin early voting Tuesday for a March 13 special election on whether to raise the city sales tax to fund a new interstate interchange, end an unpopular fee and expand sewer services.
Early voting will be at the Jess Odom Community Center, 1100 Edgewood Drive in Maumelle, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and at the Pulaski County Regional Building, 501 W. Markham St. in Little Rock, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and again on March 12.
The three issues on the ballot, each to be voted on separately, are: a one-half percent sales tax to support a $15.59 million bond issue to pay for a planned interchange to connect Counts Massie Road with Interstate 40; a one-half percent sales tax for a $2.3 million bond issue to extend sewer service into the city's north end around the Morgan interchange at I-40; and a one-half percent "public safety" sales tax.
If all of the taxes pass, the maximum increase would be 1 percentage point. Even if both bond issue taxes pass, that portion of the tax isn't to exceed one-half percent. Each of those would also expire once the bond debt is paid. The public safety tax would be permanent.
"It is a little confusing," said Maumelle City Council member Marion Scott-Coney, chairman of Maumelle Vision for the Future, the group promoting the taxes through the Maumelle Area Chamber of Commerce. "We're doing everything we can to get the word out."
Maumelle already has a 1 percent city tax on top of a 6.5 percent state tax and a 1 percent Pulaski County tax.
The public safety tax is primarily to provide revenue for the city's police and fire departments, though the revenue from it could be used for other needs, including street lighting and repairs of walking trails. It could also become "backup revenue," if ever needed, for repayment of the bond debt for the interchange and sewer issues, City Attorney Caleb Norris said Thursday.
To make the public safety tax increase more palatable, the Maumelle City Council approved an ordinance in December that pledges to eliminate a $6 monthly community service fee -- $72 annually -- if that tax is approved. The fee, billed to households quarterly with a separate garbage collection charge, has been unpopular with Maumelle residents for many years and has proved burdensome for the city to collect.
"With the community service fee part, a lot of people confuse this with the garbage fee," Scott-Coney said. "We're trying to make this clear. This is only going to take away $6 a month from your bill."
Maumelle Vision for the Future has sponsored two town hall meetings and is to host a free cookout today and two "coffee talks" at the chamber to try to explain the issues to voters.
"When you talk to someone one on one, it's easier to understand than it is listening to a presentation or reading it on paper," Scott-Coney said.
There hasn't been any organized opposition to the tax measures, but residents such as Andrew Fong have raised concerns about who's behind the tax push and why a tax increase is the only alternative. Fong has a Facebook page, Maumelle-Discuss the Issues.
"One thing is I think our local taxes are too high," Fong said in an interview Friday. "I don't like the way they've done it. They've gotten all these outside interests to donate over $40,000 in this campaign, and we've found out a lot of money are from outside Maumelle from people who possibly could be landowners who would stand to benefit greatly from this."
Scott-Coney said that, as the Vision group's chairman, she isn't representing anyone except Maumelle's residents.
"I think it's the right thing to do for our city," she said of the tax proposals.
Fong said the public safety tax is "in some ways, a tax increase," because it is projected to raise $1.1 million annually while the community service fee raises only $700,000 annually.
"The primary reason they cite is that it is for public safety, primarily police and fire and street lighting," Fong said. "It's supposed to also back up the bonds in case the sales tax revenue happens to go down."
The biggest issue, part of Vision for the Future's "Fix Our Traffic" slogan, is the vote to pay for the I-40 interchange. Scott-Coney agreed the interchange won't "fix" the boulevard traffic problems, but said it would divert some traffic from an increasingly congested Maumelle Boulevard to I-40.
"We are not naive enough to think the skies are going to part and birds are going to sing and nobody's going to be on the boulevard," Scott-Coney said. "This is going to funnel off some of that traffic on the east side of town."
Fong said that he's asked how much the new interchange would improve the daily traffic problems or even help with its occasional "nightmare scenario."
"It will improve some," he said. "But if there's a problem on [Interstate] 430 or I-40, it's still going to back up."
The sewer expansion would provide service extensions and improvements on commercial property inside Maumelle's city limits in the Morgan interchange area and some properties outside the city limits that are planned to be annexed, Mayor Mike Watson has said.
Together, the new interchange and expanded sewer service could draw commercial and "big-box" stores to Maumelle, increasing its tax base, some city tax proponents have said. Commercial developers have looked at Maumelle before, then settled elsewhere because of the lack of either interstate access or sewer service, officials have said.
"You know it takes money to make money," Scott-Coney said. "That's what we're doing. We're making an investment in our future."
Metro on 03/04/2018