As best I can tell, Clay County will decide tonight as to their tax rate for 2007. At least, it is on the agenda, although it could of course be tabled to be acted on at a regular meeting rather than a work session. Every local council runs slightly differently, so I don’t know exactly how they run things there. That aside, the Kansas City Star published a good editorial last week calling on Clay County to let the voters decide whether they want to choose between continuing the sales-tax-only system via increasing sales taxes to meet the new road demands, or reinstituting a property tax. If the road and bridge demands on the county, coming out of the recent lawsuit, can be met by a moderate increase in the sales tax, than I agree that should be given very strong consideration — as opposed to reinstituting the property tax.
The citizens of Clay County have elected to try something very interesting in choosing to rely only on sales taxes to fund county services. The county should do all it can to continue that decision.
It will be interesting to see whether any other counties elect to go that route. The county in the Saint Louis-area for which this plan might make the most sense would be St. Charles County. They have plenty of retail outlets in St. Charles to, perhaps, make it work. Somebody in St. Charles government should run those numbers. Perhaps I will — should I get just stupendously bored one day.
