Sales Tax Turning Out to Be A Hard Sell

The defeat of the sales tax here in Lee County followed the trend all over the state. Lee County was one of twenty counties to have the quarter-cent sales tax hike on the ballot with Cumberland and Haywood the only counties approving. That is 1 in 10 contrasted, with five out of 11 counties approving the sales tax last year. Interestingly, Cumberland approved the tax this time after seeing it narrowly fail last time. The Cumberland situation had two interesting features. First the commissioners committed to a $ .02 property tax decrease if the sales tax passed. Secondly, it had funded three local projects that would be stopped if the sales tax failed. Taxpayers could see a real win-loss in their votes. Note that the favorable situation was set up by the commissioners.

The axiom still has not changed--giving the voters definite uses for the money is necessary for one of these taxes to pass. In fairness, a tax can still fail in counties that appear to have done this.

We had something vague with no community consensus on what renovation of Lee Senior High School should mean and no firm commitment from our commissioners. Our Fair Tax committee got a late start and faced a statewide organization that had already sharpened its teeth fighting this tax across the state. Those who worked can find some comfort in that we got larger margins for the tax than some other counties--but closer only counts in horse shoes.

Real facility problems remain at Lee County High School that will need to be addressed, and real leadership is going to be required to find a solution for funding them--a level of leadership we have not yet seen from our commissioners.