By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
As the Ellis County Commission works to secure a better financial outlook it appears even more likely that voters will see a sales tax question on a ballot in the near future.
At a special meeting Tuesday, the commission continued discussions on a proposed countywide sales tax.
Early this year all three commissioners expressed interest in putting a sales tax question on the ballot but they were split on the size and where the money would go.
At Tuesday’s meeting in the BriefSpace basement conference room, the commission settled on a half-cent sales tax with half of the revenue earmarked specifically for health services and the other half going to fund the road and bridge department.
They also decided to begin taking steps to have a mail-in ballot election in the spring of 2020. The 2020 Nov. general election is expected to contain a number of issues; it’s a presidential election and USD 489 is expected to have a bond issue election. All that factored into their decision to go with a mail-in election.
The plan will call for a quarter-cent sales tax that goes specifically to health services in Ellis County and another quarter going to the general fund with the money being directed toward road and bridge maintenance.
Commissioner Dustin Roths has lobbied for a sales tax earmarked for county Emergency Medical Services.
Roths said the commission needs let people know about the extremely high-level EMS services offered in Ellis County.
He also noted the importance of retirees to Ellis County and the number of retirement age people moving to Hays. The majority of the EMS calls in Ellis County come from in the city of Hays.
Under state law, if a sales tax dedicated to health services Ellis County will be able to keep all the revenue.
State law does not allow counties to have two specialty sales taxes so the revenue from the quarter-cent sales tax would have to be shared among the cities within the county.
All three commissioners agreed that it would be good to share the added revenue with the other communities because they have projects they need to get done as well.
Roths estimated the quarter-cent tax shared with the cities would generate about $900,000 per year for Ellis County. He said Tuesday he wanted continue adding funds to the Public Works Department because the county has used Road and Bridge funds to help with the budget situation.
Commissioner Dean Haselhorst echoed Roths comments and said the “road and bridge problems are not going away.”
Haselhorst said they are also concerned about the difficulty they are having in hiring people at Public Works and they may have to look at increasing the hourly rate to entice people to work for the county and not in the private sector.
He also said that he believes the Northwest Business Corridor is going to be, “huge” and a continued draw for people from out of town.
The commission also settled on having both proposed sales taxes sunset in 10 years.
Haselhorst said he agreed with a sunset because he would feel like they were holding the next group of commissioners hostage if it was allowed to go on forever.
County Administrator Phillip Smith-Hanes said they will present the two questions before the commission at its Sept. 16 meeting for consideration.