Poplar Bluff will make fourth attempt to get a use tax

Poplar Bluff city leaders will make a fourth attempt April 7 at passing a use tax.

The most recent attempt to pass the tax, in November, failed 276-491.

City manager Mark Massingham hopes more efforts to educate the public about the need will help turn the tide with this election.

The matter was discussed and approved Monday by the Poplar Bluff City Council.

“I think the fact that we plan on putting this on the ballot a fourth time, it illustrates the dilemma not only our city, but a lot of cities are in,” said council member at-large Steve Davis, mayor pro tem. “I think it’s pretty apparent a lot of revenue streams are shrinking.”

It has been estimated the tax would generate between $300,000-$350,000 annually.

The tax would be collected on items bought elsewhere and brought or shipped into the state, such as online purchases. It would be taxed at the same sales tax rate as the city sales tax applied to items bought in a local brick and mortar business.

Money would go to the city’s general revenue fund. This fund pays for salary and benefit expenses for departments including police, fire and street, as well as other expenses across the city budget.

Resident Jim Chrisman, one of the candidates who has filed to run against Davis in April, said the city needs to rescind a plan to purchase property on Shelby Road for a police department, if they want support.

City officials have said the cost for the police department, as well as a planned downtown city hall, will come from a separate stream of money, generated by a capital improvement sales tax.

“This is the way one person feels, the logic I’m using on whether or not I can support this,” Chrisman said.

Council member at-large Ron Black agreed with Chrisman that the Shelby Road decision was considered unpopular by some. Black’s term is also expiring, but he has not filed for re-election.

Chrisman is comparing apples to oranges, when bringing the Shelby Road decision into a discussion about the use tax, according to Black.

If people see value or a need for the use tax, they should vote for it, regardless of their feelings on the Shelby Road purchase, he said.

“It’s beyond my comprehension that because of this decision that somebody disagreed with, and that is their right, but, yet, they hold a grudge against something, when some of them have said it (the use tax) was the right thing,” he said.

Massingham and other city officials have said local sales tax is not seeing the growth it should, attributing this to increases in online purchasing over local brick and mortar locations.

Many cities across the state have passed the use, including Cape Girardeau, which did so by a

margin in April 2015. In 2018, the use tax there generated more than $1.2 million.

Cape Girardeau have officials also cited slowing sales tax collections at local brick and mortar businesses as a need for the use tax.

“Our retail outlets aren’t getting bigger, they’re getting smaller and fewer,” Cape Girardeau County Treasurer Roger Hudson said in an October 2019 interview with the Southeast Missourian. “And since 2008, our sales tax revenue is only up something like 1.6%.”

Poplar Bluff’s general fund sales tax has seen average growth of 2-2.5% in recent years, Massingham said in December, when officials began looking at a 2020 budget nearly $300,000 in the red.

If the use tax fails to pass, Massingham has said further reductions may be needed before the end of 2020.