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Village voters will again consider continuing a 1-percent income tax for general expenses for five more years.
Waynesville voters will find the ballot measure listed as Issue 4 on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The five-year, 1 percent income tax — on people working in Waynesville, not those living there and working outside the village, except in cases of residents who work in areas without a local income tax — raises about $400,000 a year for operation of the local government. The village emerged from fiscal emergency earlier this year.
“I truly think it has a good chance of passing,” said Warren Sheehan, a former elected official and long-time resident. “There is no other revenue to speak of.”
In 2010, Sheehan backed a local referendum on whether to keep the tax after it was originally imposed by the village council. It expires on June 30, 2015.
Sheehan has posted a sign encouraging voters to inquire about the issue.
“Tax. Ask why?” Sheehan’s sign reads.
Sheehan said he posted the sign in hopes of getting voters to ask village leaders why they are proposing the issue again. “The message is, ‘People need to be involved and understand why they are doing what they are doing.”
Sheehan has suggested the village council continue imposing the tax or free up cash by slowing down the schedule of repayments on the debt on the village administrative center. This would free up about $200,000 a year, while adding as little as $16,500 a year in interest payments, he said.
So far, the village council has instead decided to ask voters to support the income tax.
Rather than imposing the tax, the council is looking to voters for direction, Mayor David Stubbs said.
“We have to understand what the people want,” Stubbs said. “They’ve got to tell us.”
Despite the May rejection, Stubbs said the council thinks voters would rather continue the tax than experience the reduction in services that would come without it, including layoffs.
Meanwhile the council is weighing whether to fire the Regional Income Tax Authority, the entity collecting the income tax, in response to local criticism.
“It turns out that many councilmembers have received quite a few complaints from residents,” Stubbs said, adding this change would only happen if voters approved the issue.
The council also held a hearing to gauge local sentiments.
“No one showed up,” Stubbs said. “I think people just aren’t interested in politics right now.”
Other than Sheehan’s call for political activism, Stubbs said there was no opposition, except at the ballot box.
He suggested voters misunderstood the issue in May. “There were more ‘No’ votes than people that pay the tax.”
James Prickett, owner of a barber shop in town, said voters were being given a chance to endorse the issue before the council went ahead and imposed the tax again.
“If you don’t do it, they are going to do it anyway,” Prickett said, while declining to say which way he would vote.
The levy committee is contemplating whether it should pay for a letter to voters explaining who paid and what the taxes paid for, Stubbs said.
Without the income tax, the village will be hard-pressed to continue to operate, Stubbs said.
“There’s really no other way,” he said. “It has to pass.”
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