CLYDE — In March 2016, Clyde residents will be going to the ballot box to determine the fate of the city’s income tax.
In a special session of Clyde City Council on Monday night, council passed a resolution to put a renewal of the city’s 1.5 percent income tax on the ballot for the March 15, 2016 primary election.
Clyde mayor Scott Black was quick to point out the income tax is a renewal and not an additional tax. He also believes the tax is essential to Clyde.
“I think this income tax renewal is one of the most important things that we as a city put out there,” Black said. “The people that don’t live in Clyde, but come into Clyde use our roads, water, sewer and everything else. This income tax is essential to keep those things maintained.”
According to City Manager Paul Fiser, 75 percent of the money brought in by the income tax is from people who don’t live in Clyde, but just work in the city.
“In a nutshell, three quarters of what we take in through the income tax is from individuals who are not city residents,” Fiser said.
Clyde City Council member Ken Dick believes residents will agree that the income tax is needed once they see the facts about how the money has been used in the past.
“I think we’ve been very prudent with the taxpayers money,” Dick said. “I don’t think we overspend, sometimes I think we under spend on somethings. We’ve been really good with their money. I know that the residents will see that once we show it to them in black and white.”
Fiser is concerned that the city won’t have as much time to get those facts out to the public though, due to the change in the normal primary election schedule. Usually the held in May, but the state has moved next year’s primary to March.
“By having the election moved to March, we’re going to lose some time to get the facts out,” Fiser said. “We’ll be sending out a fact sheet to everyone in Clyde, starting at the beginning of the year. It will show what the income tax is used for, what we’ve done with it since the last renewal and, more importantly, how the money comes in.”
The change in the timing of the primary election, coupled with another change by the state, had city administrators scrambling to meet the deadline to file with the board of elections, according to Clyde finance director Craig Davis.
“It used to always be 75 days and they moved it to 90 days, and they also took the primary, which is usually in May, and moved it to March,” Davis said. “Normally we would have done this 75 days from May, but we were reading the time line we realized we had to move the meeting up.”
Council moved the regular meeting, which was schedule for Tuesday night, up a day to Monday night in order meet the new deadline.
“You have to have the ballot language in to the board of elections 90 days before the primary election,” Davis said. “The primary is March 15. That leaves us with Dec. 15 as our deadline to get it in.
“The ordinance that was read tonight has a 30-day wait period to take effect. If we would have waited until the regularly scheduled meeting, that wait period would have ended on Dec. 16, which would have made us one day late for filing with the board of elections.”
If the income tax renewal is approved by voters, it will go into effect January 2017.
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