6th penny talks

The Carbon County Council of Governments (CCCOG) had a special meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the Platte Valley Community Center in Saratoga. The purpose of the special meeting was to discuss the 6th Penny Tax, also known as the Specific Purpose Excise Tax.

This is not to be confused with 5th Penny Tax that is officially known as the One Percent Sales and Use Tax coming up for renewal on the Nov. 6 ballot.

The 5th Penny Tax funds services for all Carbon County communities. Based on a 41-year average it has generated up to six million dollars a year. Each municipality decides where its share is spent and proponents point out with local and state budget cuts, the tax is important. More than a third of this revenue is generated by visitors in Carbon County. The tax has helped fund senior centers throughout the county while specifically helping the towns of Elk Mountain, Baggs, Dixon and Encampment with mosquito control, fire department and emergency medical services. Saratoga and Riverside have used their share of the revenue to fund public works. Hanna and Medicine Bow have used funds from the tax for museums, medical services and recreation work.

The 5th Penny Tax has been the subject of several CCCOG meetings on how to educate the public on how important this tax is for each municipality’s well being.

Knowing there is resistance to taxes in general by Wyomingites, CCCOG has been respectful in reintroducing the 6th Penny Tax.

Paul Hanley, Senior Vice President at George K. Baum and Company, said there were four steps to having a successful outreach to the voters to understand the importance of the tax. His company, was contracted in prior years to help CCCOG get the 6th Penny Tax on the ballot.

Hanley said the four steps his company would do to help CCCOG, if contracted again, would be establish a needs assessment, pull together a public information program, get community comment and then put forth a campaign.

Barbara Bonds, principal at Freudenthal and Bonds PC, spoke to the attendees after Hanley finished his presentation.

“The real work starts now from all the communities making the determination as to what projects are necessary to you and putting together numbers and projections so that we know we can legitimately put them on the ballot,” Bonds said.

The law requires the specific purpose tax to be used for determined projects in a timely manner.

“It doesn’t go over very well with us to finance the bond monies unless we know you are going to expend the money in the particular timelines specified,” Bonds said. “We just can’t finance bonds that don’t meet legal and financial guidelines.”

Bonds said she understood voters might be hesitant to support two taxes so close together.

“I think it is a matter of presentation,” Karen Heath, town clerk of Medicine Bow, said. “We need to stop calling it 5th Penny and 6th Penny because there is no difference in a person’s mind; you have to call the 5th Penny the Local Option Tax and the 6th Penny the Specific Purpose Tax. Your Specific Purpose Tax for a town project you can easily sell along with the Local Option Tax if the public is educated on what it does.”

She said if a municipality specific purpose project is for flood mitigation, you show pictures of when the national guard had to come in.

“Show the pictures and it will show imminent need,” Heath said. “No matter what the project, it is about education and asking the public what they need.”

She said in Medicine Bow there was already a consensus from the public that the town should have paved streets. Heath said the town council has already asked the public in recent meetings if the Specific Purpose Tax would be supported if it was used for streets. She said, so far, the public had been emphatic in its support for the tax.

“They said ‘do those streets no matter what it takes to do them’”, Heath recounted.

Gwynn Bartlett agreed with Heath that special purpose projects should be fairly clear for each municipality.

“These things have been talked about four to six months ago at CCCOG, so hopefully no community feels like they have to pick a project out of thin air,” Bartlett said. “This is why it is important for communities to have representatives at CCCOG.”

CCCOG approved the hiring of George K. Baum and Company to help with the campaign of the 6th Penny Tax. The council approved having each municipality project decided by Nov 9 and sent to Bartlett. Then, on Nov. 14, they could be discussed at the scheduled CCCOG meeting.

The Special Purpose Tax committee members from each municipality were identified.

Hanley said as much information should be in the process of being gathered as quick as possible and sent to George K. Baum.

The justification for getting the projects pulled together as quickly as possible is to get the tax ready for a special election by May 19, 2019.

There are several wind projects coming to Carbon County that would put substantial revenue into the coffers of the county if this Special Purpose Tax was approved at the date CCCOG is targeting. The wind projects must be completed by 2020, so if the Special Purpose Tax was not approved in May 2019, considerable funds could be lost that would benefit all citizens of Carbon County. This is a concern for Carbon County commissioners and municipalities.

Morgan Irene, mayor of Elk Mountain and Secretary of CCCOG, suggested voters should be made aware the 6th Penny Tax of 2009 had been paid off early to show people the municipalities were responsible when asking for new taxation.

The next scheduled CCCOG meeting is at 6:30 p.m. on Sept 19 in Hanna.