After a 25-minute debate Tuesday, the Wright County Board of Commissioners voted, 4-1 to adopt a 1/2% sales tax to help fund county road projects totalling more than $80 million over the next 15 to 20 years.

 

Most of Tuesday’s discussion focused on whether to set an end date to the tax, which has been estimated to bring in  between $5 million and $6 million a year.

 

After Dist. 4 Commissioner Michael Potter made a motion to adopt the resolution for the tax, discussion began.

 

“I don’t like the idea of doing it for 15 years,” said Dist. 3 Commissioner Mark Daleiden. “I’d like to be able to look at it in five years and make sure that we haven’t done anything detrimental to our local businesses.”

 

Board Chair Charles Borrell agreed.

 

“At least it makes a future board make an affirmative vote in favor of this,” he said. “It’s not going to be an automatic.”

 

But Potter said setting an end date wasn’t necessary.

 

“The local option sales tax can be repealed at any time by the county board if they choose to do so,” he said. “The time frame we have here (15 to 20 years) is merely the amount of projects we have on the books right now and how much time it would take to collect that money to complete those projects.”

 

Potter said it was time to take action because federal and state lawmakers haven’t stepped up to take care of the problem.

 

“More and more counties are adopting this because they all have the same bad taste in their mouth about how the legislature dealt with this,” he said. “The longer we kick the can down the road, we turn into Pennsylvania that actually has a $0.31 gas tax increase just to make ends meet. I want to avoid that option.”

 

Potter said when the North East Wright County road study is completed, the actual project needs will be closer to $100 million.

 

Borrell asked whether the board had to insert an actual end date into the resolution.

 

Chief Deputy Attorney Brian Aselson said not necessarily, according to state statute. 

 

“You either set an end date or it remains in effect until all the projects named are completed,” he said. “It could be interpreted that his motion was to have this go into effect indefinitely until those projects are completed.”

 

“Mr Chair, that was my intent,” said Potter.

 

Daleiden again reiterated his concern about “tying up” future county boards. He said it was better to set an end date, “and let’s see what happens.”

 

A motion was made to amend Potter’s original motion and add an end date of Dec. 31, 2022. It passed 3-1-1.

 

When the board prepared to vote on the resolution, Borrell said he was still against using all the sales tax money for the project list and wanted to use some of it to reduce the highway budget a bit to help taxpayers.

 

He was the lone “nay” vote.

 

The sales tax will go into effect Oct. 1, 2017.amount of $174,963.51.