City Sales Tax Goes To Ballot

LINCOLN PLANS TO EXPAND POLICE FORCE BY ONE OFFICER

— Lincoln City Council passed a resolution at its March 20 meeting to ask voters to approve a three-fourths percent local sales and use tax for the city’s general fund.

Mayor Rob Hulse told the Council he favored getting the issue on the ballot. Council member Johnny Stowers said the vote will have to be conducted within 120 days, which means a vote must be held by mid-July.

“The first thing is it will put another officer on duty,” Hulse said, explaining some of the new revenue generated by the tax will be used to hire a sixth police officer and the rest would go into the general fund to help pay for city maintenance and operations.

“It will take some pressure off an already small (police) department,” Hulse told Council members. “It will also give an opportunity to invest in us. There are some buildings we may have to clean up. We can go into them.”

Discussion ensued regarding recent clean-up of a property in the city limits. The consensus of the Council was the cost to the city was well worth improving community appearance and safety.

Hulse emphasized the city must increase its revenue stream in order to accomplish these objectives.

“We’re going to set ourselves up for growth and everything’s going to come together,” Hulse said. “The first thing we’re going to do is fund that officer.”

Council member Doug Hutchens said with the current five-officer rotation, the police force gets stretched a little thin.

“We’re asking guys working lots of overtime to go into some unsafe situations,” Hutchens said. “They take care of us; we need to take care of them.”

Stowers said once the Council passes an ordinance it has to be voted on in less than 120 days.

Hulse affirmed that is state law.

“You’re correct,” he told Stowers, then addressed the Council, “Let’s move forward, start the ball rolling. This could be very positive.”

Hulse said he thought about “what is the fairest tax?” He said a sales tax is the fairest tax because people coming through town will help pay for the sixth officer.

Hutchens said it’s important for the council and voters to understand the city’s position. Lincoln has to deal with the same issues as larger municipalities but doesn’t have as large population to draw from.”

“We have to do it with less revenue base,” Hutchens said. ‘Because we’re a border town, we’re picking up a lot of traffic. We wind up with more of a burden on fewer people.”

According to Hutchens, a sales tax brings outside money in, instead of just banking on the city residents.

Hulse has said he will not run for re-election, while Hutchens has announced he plans to run for mayor in November.

Council members discussed the current 2-percent sales tax rate. Most of that money is already committed, 1 percent is dedicated to capital improvements with the remainder divided between Lincoln Public Library (80 percent) and parks and recreation (20 percent), with part of this being used to pay off the library construction loan.

The February distribution was $23,641 from a projected yearly revenue of $448,235.92. The library distribution for February was $7,092.45 with parks and recreation receiving $1,733.11.

According to Enterprise Leader archives, the city received $214,263 from its 1 percent sales tax in 2014. In 2016, the city received $242,817 and for 2017, the city brought in $263,744 from its 1-percent tax, an average of about $22,000 per month.