Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams went to Jackson Wednesday to support legislation to allow Mississippi’s cities and towns to temporarily raise the sales tax to fund capital improvements.
The Citizens for Economic Development Act, which is being promoted by the Mississippi Municipal League, is intended to give localities the option of adding an additional 1 percent sales tax, if approved by 60 percent of local voters. The revenue raised by the additional tax would pay for specific projects, such as repairing roads and water systems. Once a specified project were completed, the tax would go away.
McAdams said that roughly 30 mayors were on hand for the press conference Wednesday at the Capitol.
She said most cities in the state are hard-pressed to deal with the cost of repairing aging infrastructure.
“Greenwood doesn’t have a substantial amount of money to repair streets. This is money that could be put aside. It’s something that the city could count on,” McAdams said.
On Tuesday, the Greenwood City Council unanimously approved a resolution in support of the sales tax proposal.
McAdams said the legislation in the past hasn’t fared well in the Legislature, despite the support of municipal leaders. “It is still a tax, and some people just back away from any tax,” she said.
The legislation, if enacted, would have to be reauthorized every four years, the mayor said.
The city is already facing a tough new year financially.
McAdams, speaking before the City Council Tuesday, said that the city, based on an unaudited closeout of its books, ended 2013 with a projected budget shortfall of $166,000. “Sales tax that we projected were down. We thought they were going to be up, and they were not,” McAdams told the council.
For the year ending Sept. 30, sales tax collections for the city were $100,000 below projections, the mayor said. Fines collected from municipal court came in another $90,000 less than anticipated.
Contributing to the shortfall from the expense side was the 3 percent across-the-board pay raise approved last year for city employees. The raise, which was not included in last year’s budget, wound up costing roughly $200,000, according to the mayor.
“It came from our funds. We just didn’t have enough revenue from sales taxes and fines to cover it,” she said.
For 2014, McAdams said she is looking at several cost-cutting options, including converting the Police Department from an eight- hour shift to a 12-hour one.
“It gives the officers time off. It also significantly reduces our overtime costs,” the mayor said.
Within the next month, the city will purchase a new trash truck, which will be able to handle city-provided 95-gallon containers.
McAdams said Tuesday that a small pilot program will be conducted to see how the new trash truck and containers work. The 95-gallon toters are intended to replace privately owned trash cans.
If successful, the program will be expanded to other parts of the city, based upon budget funding and other considerations, McAdams said.
It is hoped that the large toters would save on labor by reducing the number of cans garbage workers pick up.
The toters also might allow the city to reduce the number of residential pickups from twice a week to once, McAdams said.
The mayor said 2014 will be a fiscal challenge. “This budget is extremely tight.”
McAdams thanked her department heads for making ongoing efforts to trim their budgets.
