While it's been around for 35 years, supporters of renewing Cole County's half-cent capital improvement sales tax know residents need to see its benefits to support it again on the April 6 ballot.
Brad Bates, a member of the leadership team for the Citizens for Proposition A group, said people always want to see a return on their investment.
"We emphasize that 85 percent goes to road and safety improvements, and there doesn't seem to be any pushback at all because they've seen the results," Bates said. "The great thing about this tax - if there can ever be anything good about a tax - is that you don't send your money to Washington, D.C., or the state of Missouri and wonder if it ever makes it back to you. It's being used in Cole County, and you see how it's being used."
Cole County voters last approved an extension of the tax in April 2016, with just more than 79 percent voting in favor of the measure.
The sales tax, first approved in the 1980s, allows funding for road and bridge projects, which receive 85 percent of the funds generated, and facility and equipment improvements, which receive the remaining 15 percent.
"Every five years, we face the possibility that this would go away and it would be disastrous for the community if it did," Cole County Public Works Director Eric Landwehr said.
The total amount of expenditures on projects from 2022-26, should voters renew the tax, is $34,500,000 - $3.5 million more than the $31 million in the 2017-21 cycle of the tax.
Over the years, the tax has provided funding for 180 miles of gravel road upgrades to asphalt, six major bridge replacements, 28 small bridges, safety improvements and 23 cooperative projects with Jefferson City.
For the 15 percent for county facilities, the amount will increase for maintenance and renovation from $2.85 million in this cycle to $3.275 million in the next cycle. The total amount would go from $4,650,000 in this cycle to $5,175,000 in the next cycle.
"Every time you have something that's so valuable to a community and you are putting it up for one more passage, there is always the fear in the back of your mind that if this doesn't pass our community is harmed in the process," Bates said. "All indications are, right now, that citizens want to support it; but on the other hand, it's a different world than it was five years ago with the pandemic and economy, so you don't want to take anything for granted."
Landwehr said the majority of the county's revenue for public works comes from the half-cent sales tax.
The half-cent sales tax generated $5,695,000 for public works in the last fiscal year, Landwehr said.
Three other taxes help fund the county's road and bridge work, but revenue from those three combined didn't equal what the half-cent sales tax generated. During the last fiscal year, $4,133,237 from property taxes went to road and bridge work, $751,000 came from the state's County Aid Road Trust Fund and $349,000 came from vehicle sales tax revenue - totaling $5,233,232.
"The sales tax model for road and bridge improvements is what most communities across the country are doing," Landwehr said. "We can't do a gas tax - that's something only the state can do - so there's no other funding source."
The increase in value for property tax in the county has not kept up with the inflation of the goods and services the Public Works Department needs, he said.
"Asphalt, since I've been here 15 years, has more than doubled in cost. Concrete isn't quite as bad, but it's gone up, too," Landwehr said. "The road and bridge property tax doesn't keep up with that. The sales tax allows us to do our overlay program as well as many improvements that would be sometimes considered just maintenance, such as when you've got a drop inlet in a subdivision that needs to be replaced."
The county's Road and Bridge Advisory Committee spent several meetings discussing how funds from the renewed tax could be spent.
The committee opted to put more sales tax money into safety and road capacity improvements. This would be used to improve locations with a high number of accidents and intersection improvements. There was $425,000 budgeted for that work in this past five-year cycle; that amount could increase to $1,375,000 in the next cycle.
"We'd like to do more safety improvements like the project to improve five locations on Tanner Bridge Road," Landwehr said.
That project will fix sharp curves, clear trees and right-of-way for sight distance, and widen the roadway on Tanner Bridge Road from Route B to the Grande Highland Estates subdivision. The work started in this sales tax cycle and would continue in future tax cycles.
Bald Hill Road and other high-volume roads that come into Jefferson City also have places the county wants to address, he said.
"It'd be nice to do a curb and gutter upgrade on Scott Station Road coming into the city," he said. "Part of Bald Hill Road and Henwick Lane could also be looked at."
The amount for cooperative projects with the seven small communities in the county would go from $1.5 million in the current cycle to $1.7 million in the upcoming cycle.
Each of the seven small communities in Cole County - Centertown, Lohman, Russellville, St. Martins, St. Thomas, Taos and Wardsville - receives $100,000 in sales tax funds during the five-year period of the tax, generally used for overlaying streets.
A new program started in January 2018 when the Cole County Commission set up cooperative project funding guidelines for the communities to get part of $800,000 in sales tax to be used for "substantial improvements." The Road and Bridge Advisory Committee ranked the projects, and the commission awarded funds based on those rankings.
The money could be used for any road-and-bridge-related project, including stormwater improvements or sidewalk and intersection improvements. The maximum funding per project was $250,000.
"We want to go from $800,000 to $1 million because the program gave five of the seven communities the money they needed to do much-needed projects," Landwehr said.
There also would be an increase in the amount of money directed toward resurfacing and concrete replacement in the next tax cycle, from $6.25 million to $8.75 million.
"We've really been hitting hard that we need to take care of what we've got," Landwehr said. "We need to make more improvements in the road system we have. We're putting more into overlays and concrete street replacement, another $500,000 a year going for that."
Bates pointed out $5.5 million is in the next tax cycle to do cooperative projects with Jefferson City.
A cooperative project completed last year was improvements to the 300-500 blocks of West Dunklin Street in Jefferson City, which included replacing the old bridge that needed immediate repair. It also added bike lanes, sidewalk and greenway trails, and it improved stormwater and sanitary sewer systems.
"What's appealing about this tax is that the people who originated it back in 1986 had the foresight to put a checks-and-balance system in place, with the tax having a sunset every five years," Bates said. "We all know how bureaucracies get rolling when the money comes in; there's less attention to the customer than there should be. In this case, every five years the community gets to say, 'Hey, you didn't do what you promised, so we're not going for it again.' This has kept everyone attentive to the needs of our community, and I think the county has come through with flying colors. They've earned the vote."