Local News - July 13, 2002

Tax proposal angers some

By Dave Hendrick
Montgomery Advertiser

A handful of calls came in.

They weren’t plentiful. They weren’t pretty, either.

“We’ve had about 13 calls,” Montgomery County Administrator Donnie Mims said Friday afternoon. “They’re all negative.”

The calls were from Montgomery County residents giving their opinions about a 1.5 percent occupational tax commissioners might levy in an effort to generate more money for school.

It would be another deduction from the paycheck. Some people wouldn’t pay, but most would. Someone with a $30,000 salary would pay about $450 a year – about $8.65 a week.

Because voter approval of such a tax isn’t required, commissioners don’t have to try to sell it to the public. Yet, like City Council members who are weighing a 1 percent sales tax increase – which also wouldn’t require a vote of the people – they know that come election time, voters might not forget being hit with tax increases.

According to estimates accompanying a tax proposal unveiled Thursday, the city sales tax increase would net $23 million annually and the occupation tax on income earned in the county would generate $45 million.

Officials aren’t sure if the county can legally impose an occupation tax, and if the courts rule against the county, the city would impose that tax instead and the county would raise the sales tax.

The anticipated revenues would mean an extra $36 million a year annually for Montgomery’s public schools. Other proceeds would go for expenses the city is obligated to cover, such as payment for $5 million in increased police and firefighter salaries and for the $16 million in incentives used to attract Hyundai Motor Co. to build a plant in south Montgomery.

The city would also apply the expected revenues to a bunch of wish-list items. They range from $10 million for riverfront revitalization and $18 million for construction of an multiuse stadium downtown to $15 million for its share of a city-county communications center and $1.5 million for an elephant habitat at the Montgomery Zoo.

If the taxes go through, commissioners and council members know they must successfully market their decision to raise taxes after the fact or possibly lose their elected positions.

It’s a chance some are willing to take.

“I can’t look at politics right now,” District 4 County Commissioner Jiles Williams said. “I have to look at the welfare of the people. We have to go into this carefully.”

Williams plans to call a town meeting in the next couple of weeks to gather his constituents’ opinions.

“If the people say no, I’m voting no. If the majority say yes, I’ll vote yes. The people sent me downtown to represent them. I have to represent the people and use my own judgment.”

District 9 Councilman Charles Jinright said he plans to vote for the 1 percent sales tax increase. He knows he will take heat. He already has taken some.

“I got one call,” Jinright said. “It was negative.”

Jinright, the rest of the council and Mayor Bobby Bright will all be up for re-election next year. By then, Jinright said, the revenues had better have been used effectively to prove that raising taxes was the right thing to do.

“You have to show the people something is going to happen,” he said. “You have to show the results.”

Results equate to better police service, road improvements such as paving and repairing streets, and overall improvements in the city.

Many city services and needs have been neglected too long, Jinright said. Among the neglected items are garbage trucks. Twelve to 15 city garbage trucks are in the repair shop daily. They are old, worn out and need repair, he said.

Other expenses, such as revitalizing the riverfront, would improve the quality of life in Montgomery, Jinright said.

He said it’s time for him and his colleagues to make tough decisions to improve the quality of life and services in Montgomery, even if it costs them their seats in the council chambers.

The first-term mayor, Bright, agrees.

“You have to do what is right in your hear, no matter what the public opinion is,” he said. “Truly in my heart, this is what is right for Montgomery. We have sat back too long and done nothing, absolutely no progress. We are doing something, and hoping and praying it is the right thing. Only time will tell.”

Taxpayer resistance is to be expected, said Mark Kelly, spokesman for the city of Birmingham. That city’s occupational tax, Kelly said, initially provoked hard feelings.

“Some businesses relocated at first,” Kelly said. But more people moved in than moved out. Those who moved in considered the tax just another business expense.

No council members were unseated solely because of their decision to impose the occupational tax, he said.

“If you ask people if they would like to remove the 1 percent occupational tax, they would say yes,” Kelly said. “But if they saw the result of the over $40 million a year that would not be available to the city to provide the services they now expect, they would give a different answer.”