Sales-tax proposal draws little comment

One person spoke at Tuesday’s public hearing as Franklin County commissioners consider making permanent a temporary sales tax to pay for a new jail.

It was the first of three meetings for the public to provide input on the recommendation of Franklin County Administrator Kenneth Wilson regarding the quarter-cent sales tax that generates about $60 million per year and is set to expire Dec. 31, 2018.

Commissioner John O’Grady missed the meeting to attend a funeral, but Commissioners Kevin Boyce and Marilyn Brown were surprised that no representatives of the agencies receiving millions annually from Franklin County to provide services attended Tuesday’s hearing. Franklin County provides $16 million so those agencies can provide mostly social services augmenting or supplementing county services.

“I’m a little disappointed,” Boyce said of the lack of participation and input. “The public shouldn’t just hear from us. They should hear from the folks on the ground, on the front line.”

Michael Vinson, a selfprofessed community activist and the only speaker at the hearing, insisted that a new jail wasn’t needed but that other reforms were that were unrelated to the public hearing.

In 2013, commissioners adopted two quarter-cent sales taxes. One was permanent and helps fund what this year is the county’s $444 million general fund to pay for day-to-day government operations.

The other was a fiveyear, quarter-cent sales tax to fund the new jail and new morgue — that costs a combined $218 million so far — and programs supporting economic development and other services. Wilson recommends a new, permanent quarter-cent sales tax to replace it when it expires at the end of next year.

Not making the sales tax permanent, Wilson said, endangers programs that help many people to climb out of poverty and that provide food and other services to the needy.

“These are not wants. These are human needs in our community,” Wilson said Tuesday.

He suggested that alternatives such as extending the temporary sales tax for five more years are “shortsighted” and should be dismissed in favor of his recommendation.

O’Grady supports making the sales tax permanent. Brown and Boyce are waiting until the public hearings have concluded to announce their decisions.

The next public hearing is at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the West Conference Room of Memorial Hall, 280 E. Broad St.

The final of the three public hearings is 9 a.m. Dec. 19 at the county commissioners’ meeting, Floor 26, 373 S. High St.