January 30, 2025
By: Dwayne Page
Will they, or won’t they?
The Alexandria Mayor and Aldermen are scheduled to meet Friday night, January 31 at city hall and on the agenda is the “local sales tax” issue.
A decision was expected December 17 by the mayor and aldermen on whether they would extend the town’s local option sales tax agreement with the county through the year 2055 to help support long term debt payment on new school construction as the other three municipalities have done but there was no vote, because there was no meeting due to the lack of a quorum.
This month’s meeting, set for Tuesday, January 28, was postponed until Thursday night, January 30 but then delayed again until Friday night, January 31 at 7 p.m. at city hall
Alexandria has not yet publicly signaled whether it will or won’t extend its sales tax agreement. The county’s self-imposed January 1 deadline to hear from Alexandria was extended to February 1, 2025.
Under the existing sales tax agreements with the county, which are set to expire in 12 years on July 16, 2037, the four cities, Smithville, Alexandria, Liberty, and Dowelltown turn over to the county for schools a greater percentage of their local option sales tax collections than they would otherwise be required to do. By law, the municipalities must contribute 50% of their sales tax money to the county for schools but by agreement, since 1968, the towns give basically two thirds of their share and all that sales tax money goes into what is called the Local Purpose Tax Fund for Schools to help fund school operation and debt. Officials say the county must be able to count on that extra sales tax money coming in from the cities over the life of a 30-year bond up to $55 million in order to cover the costs of a new school without having to use or raise property taxes to fund it.
All five county schools have benefitted over the years from this local purpose sales tax fund which has helped support various school construction and renovation projects including at DeKalb West School. In fact the debt has apparently yet to be retired on the Tornado Safe classroom addition project which was completed over 10 years ago. The construction debt on Northside Elementary School was paid off only recently, within the last two or three years.
Meanwhile the Alexandria city meeting agenda for January also includes the following:
*Mayor Beth Tripp opening the meeting
*Roll Call
*Prayer and Pledge
*Approval of previous meeting minutes
*Zoning-second and final reading
*County Mayor Matt Adcock (scheduled to speak)
*Open floor for residents (public comment)
*Local Sales Tax
*Department monthly reports (mayor, fire, police, streets, financial, attorney)
*Unfinished business
*New business- Seay Church, Senior Citizens Center
*Any other business properly submitted by board members
*Adjourn