Dear Editor:
Jefferson City needs to reprioritize how we use our tax revenues. We have dedicated taxes that fund "nice to have" projects while our infrastructure falls into disrepair. We have a one-half percent dedicated sales tax for capital improvements and a one-half percent that funds parks. Each generates more than $5 million per year. These two taxes account for 50 percent of city sales tax revenue. Jefferson City needs funds for road and storm sewer maintenance and repair instead of financing new projects. We should consider repurposing some of these dedicated tax revenues.
Parks Director Todd Spalding stated he thought parks could put aside $1 million per year of the sales tax to pay for bonds. Parks is currently developing a master plan on how to spend these funds. Perhaps we should consider a vote to reduce the parks sales tax. Parks has a budget of around $7 million plus a bank account with unexpended funds of $7.5 million - over a year's reserves.
We have used the parks sales tax to rebuild the golf course, build a water park, 15 miles of greenway and 10 miles of connectors, we have 15 miles of unimproved trails, 206 acres of Cedar City, and paid for the city portion of the Linc Wellness Center and still have this large reserve. We should consider voting to reduce the parks sales tax by 20 percent ($1 million per year) and repurpose the money for streets and storm sewers.
The next time we vote on the Capital Improvements Sales Tax we should repurpose it as a Capital Maintenance tax for a five-year period to patch roads and fix storm sewers. These funds should not continue to be used for "nice to have" items like street lighting, sidewalks, river front development, and other similar projects.
We have several million dollars sitting in the tourism tax fund. We don't need to use these funds to build a conference/civic center that will lose money. We have Miller Performing Arts Center for civic activities. Conference facilities exist and a city-owned facility will take money away from established venues. We should use these funds to repair roads and storm sewers so tourists are impressed when they come here.
We need to realize we must take care of what we have instead of continuing to build new facilities we can't afford to maintain or that will lose money.