County discusses sales tax

On Monday night, White County commissioners met in their regularly scheduled committee meetings, and the result was that White County residents will once again be asked to vote on a change in sales tax.  

Currently, White County has a 9.25 percent sales tax while the city of Sparta has a 9.75 percent tax. It does not matter where a person lives; it only matters where they shop for the paying of this tax. When shopping inside city limits, which includes Walmart, Bealls, and most restaurants, a person is required to pay the 9.75 percent tax, and some commissioners believe that the county is missing out on a lot of money by not following suit.  

Derrick Hutchings, a commissioner from District 6, said that he believes a lot of people would have voted in favor of raising the sales tax if they had known that the alternative was the increase in property tax that took place this past fall.  

“There was a lot of discussion after it failed with people saying there wasn’t enough transparency on what we would allocate the funds to,” Hutchings told Steering Committee B members on Monday night. “I think it would behoove us to have a group consensus, even a resolution, so the people would know what they are voting for.” 

Hutchings said that his hope would be to have a large portion of the property tax repealed if a sales tax referendum were to pass. He said that he would also like to see money be put toward capital projects, specifically fire trucks, and then allocate a couple of cents per dollar to go toward the animal shelter.  

“We don’t have to do anything until [it passes an election],” Hutchings said, “but the feeling I get from the community is that ‘we won’t vote for it unless we know what it’s going for.’” 

It was stated in the meeting that half of the sales tax would go directly to White County Schools, but that would reduce the amount of money paid to the school system from property taxes.  

Hutchings told fellow committee members that for a sales tax referendum to be put on the May ballot, it would have to pass through the White County Commissioners Full Court this month. He said that his incentive for doing that now rather than waiting until the August or November elections is budgeting. Hutchings said that if the sales tax referendum passed in May, that would help the budget committee as they work through the process of balancing another budget.

After a roll call vote, it was decided to send a resolution to the full court commission to vote on putting a Sales Tax Referendum on the May primary ballot. Those commissioners voting in favor of putting the referendum up for a vote were Kyle Goff, Robert McCormick, Derrick Hutchings, and David Cranford. Those commissioners voting against the decision were Dakota White, Cain Rogers, and Jordan Cocke.