The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
County voters to face 1-cent sales tax on ballot
by David Grimes, Quill Correspondent
OQUAWKA-When Henderson County voters go to the polls this spring, they will be asked whether the county should implement a 1-cent local sales tax for public safety to help offset dwindling county funds that have left the budget in the red for the past five years.
The current Illinois sales tax is 6.25 percent.
A resolution by the county board was drafted earlier this month proposing that the matter be put to voters at the April 5 election.
"The county has had a deficit budget for eight of the past 10 years," Henderson County States Attorney Ray Cavanaugh said.
The 2004-05 budget alone has a deficit of $95,000.
"And the county's reserves are nearly depleted," Cavanaugh said.
Reasons for implementing the tax are myriad: dwindling property taxes after state legislators increased exemptions for property owners, increasing state and federal mandates whose costs exceed state and federal funding and increasing costs for local government services.
Property owner exemptions totaling $30,000 affected the two county school districts and county library as well as the county's general fund.
The increase is not the result of a free-spending county board.
Board members are in their second year of choosing not to receive payment for meetings attended, personnel and additional budget cuts at courthouse offices and at the sheriff's office have been implemented and courthouse hours have been cut.
Seeking a realistic solution to the ongoing financial drain, board members first looked at how neighboring counties are handling similar problems.
Warren and Mercer counties are considering the viability of a public safety tax and Fulton County, facing a $1.2 million deficit, implemented a tax two years ago, adding $800,000 to county coffers and sparing some 30 county employees who would have been pink-slipped.
Knox and McDonough counties impose a 1-cent public safety tax.
State law provides for local government to put the matter of implementing the public safety tax to a vote, with the tax amount to be exacted in one-quarter percent increments.
"All local jurisdictions around us already have the tax in place or are considering it," Cavanaugh said.
The public safety tax, according to state law, must be used for county expenses relating to transportation needs and public safety costs such as maintaining crime prevention and detention programs, police, medical, firefighting and other emergency services.
Henderson County's current budget for those expenses is $560,000. A public safety tax would provide for about $160,000 of that amount.
The tax would be imposed on goods, not services, and would be collected on retail sales on products such as prepared foods (restaurants), gasoline, cigerettes, and liquor.
If the Henderson County proposal passes, sales tax on those items would increase to 7.25 percent.
Products that would not be affected by the tax include prescription and non-prescription drugs, unprepared foods, farm equipment and personal property titled or registered with a state agency.
Passage of the tax proposal would result in the county imposing the tax beginning Jan. 1, 2006.
"The county budget has already been cut as much as it can be and remain effective," Cavanaugh said. "(The public safety tax) is the fairest tax of all for everyone."
Implementation of the tax would capture revenue generated when out-of-towners travel to Oquawka, particularly during summer months when traffic increases due to the village's access to the Mississippi River and recreational activity peaks.
"Peoria, Burlington, Macomb and Galesburg are all already doing this," Cavanaugh said. "Basically, implementing a public safety tax would help bring us up to the speed with the 21st century."