SCOTT SALES TAX WILL BE REVOTED; COMMISSION PLANS TO GIVE MORE FACTS

BENTON -- The Scott County Commission will resubmit a quarter-cent county sales tax but this time will tell voters exactly where the money will go.

Commissioner Dewaine Shaffer said he has heard that Tuesday's tax proposal was defeated by voters because it was not earmarked for a specific program.

"We as commissioners felt like that was a plus for us; that way we could use the money in the area where it was needed," Shaffer said. "Evidentially the people want to know exactly where it's going."

Another option commissioners discussed at a meeting Thursday was limiting the life of the tax. Shaffer said this would allow the county to get back on its feet financially, then give voters a chance to decide if they want to continue the tax.

"They could vote on it again if they felt like we were really making it work," he said.

Shaffer said the commission hasn't decided if it will put the tax on the ballot in the fall or wait until next year.

Commissioner Walter Bizzell said unless the county can come up with some kind of additional areas of revenue in the meantime some programs will be cut back. Specifically, he said, not as many roads are going to be improved as last year.

"We have 140 miles of blacktop in this area, and if we have to overcap some of them this summer we won't be able to do them all," Bizzell said.

Bizzell said it costs about $21,000 a mile for the work and the county is not going to have the money to do the same number of miles it did last year.

Bizzell said he was surprised by the lack of support the tax received in rural areas. The tax got about 40 percent support in the Sikeston precincts but was only supported in the rural areas by about 28 percent of the voters.

He said the commission is going to have to do a better job of getting information out to rural voters next time.

"The rural communities didn't pass it, and that's where a lot of the money from this tax would have gone: to help them with their roads," Bizzell said. "We've got bridges falling apart -- we've got five condemned right now -- and we need the money to fix them."

Bizzell said the county started the year with $523,479 in its reserve fund. If an emergency expenditure arises he doesn't know how the county is going to pay for it.

He said an industrial park being constructed on the north end of Sikeston will eventually help the county's financial problems. Steve McPheeters, Sikeston Area Chamber of Commerce president, said it might be a few years before the county sees any real revenue from that.

"Hopefully we can come up with some solutions that will help the county in the short term until the new growth starts," McPheeters said.

Much of Sikeston's development will happen within the city limits, depriving the county of some property tax revenue. But, McPheeters said, the area should see between 600 and 800 new jobs within the next 18 months. New homes will be built and the county will benefit greatly from the rise in retail development in that area.

"We realize that we need a strong county government," McPheeters said. "We support them and we're optimistic about things in the future here."