STREET SALES TAX: NEXT STEP IS ACTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL

It is likely that the Cape Girardeau City Council will ask voters to approve a sales tax earmarked for street improvements when they go to the polls Aug. 8.

The Planning and Zoning Commission has recommended a half-cent sales tax for five years that would raise an estimated $17 million. This money would be combined with other funding to pay for some $26.4 million in improvements.

The recommendation, which the city council will consider June 5, is the culmination of a process that started weeks ago when Mayor Al Spradling III first proposed a sales tax as a way to generate the extra funding to pay for needed, but costly, improvements. Since then, the council narrowly backed away from putting the sales tax on the ballot before any citizen input was gathered. After a tie vote by the council that kept the sales tax off the ballot, Vision 2000 scheduled hearings to let residents have a say on which projects should receive attention and how to pay for them.

The hearings by the community improvement organization attracted over a hundred people who had as many general ideas as specific road projects. For example, there were several suggestions that gravel streets be paved. The P&Z recommendation placed the paving of all gravel streets, at a cost of $2.1 million, high on the list being forwarded to the city council.

Overall, Vision 2000 officials are pleased that the P&Z plan incorporates many of the ideas that were generated by the hearings. One of those officials is Councilman Melvin Gately, who cast one of the votes that kept the sales tax off the ballot earlier this year.

The Chamber of Commerce also got involved by recommending a list of projects to be considered for inclusion in the overall street-improvement plan.

While the process of involving residents in discussions before placing the issue on the ballot in no way guarantees passage of a sales tax for streets, it at least gave folks an opportunity to participate and to be heard. There will always be voters who don't like the idea of a tax increase, regardless of the amount or purpose. But voters no longer can oppose the sales tax because they opted not to participate in the hearings.

The city council, of course, could modify the P&Z recommendations by adding or subtracting projects, changing the amount of the sales tax, increasing or decreasing the length of time the sales tax would be imposed or delaying the date for the vote.

What the city council has to consider on June 5 is a sound proposal based on a solid effort to follow a commonsense course leading up to placing the issue on the ballot.

And if the half-cent tax is put on the Aug. 8 ballot, there is still an enormous task ahead in selling the proposal to voters. An organized effort similar to the hearing process would go a long way toward encouraging voters to make a careful decision on the future development of streets in the city.