What Will BOCC Decide?

Sorry for being MIA for the past week or so. It has officially entered busy season with my real job of running a photography business. I have been in the office only one day in the past week due to the schedule of pictures for schools, sports, dance and so on.

So I have not been able to spend as much time on this as I would like since the photography pays the bills and all.

But I am back on County Commission Tuesday.

Today, the big thing is the budget hearing at 5pm. That usually brings out a bit of a crowd, but I would argue that the most of the heavy lifting is already done. Today will be "minor" things here and there.... Book Page being one that is talked about getting the chop.

The 2nd biggest item I feel is somewhat related... the sales tax presentation.

As mentioned last week (here), the Chamber will be making their presentation to the BOCC today. The commissioners will then presumably direct staff or the chamber to come back with the referendum language with whatever they decide.

So let's jump in.

As mentioned before, 509 people responded to the survey. While that may not seem like all that many for a county with 115k registered voters, but it falls in line with sample size requirements for a 95% confidence level with 5% margin of error. While it may not be a scientific study and the sample not an exact match to the voting makeup of this county, it is a "sound" survey sample.

Of those 509 people, 59.1% said they they would consider voting for a 1% sales tax.

I think there is a word there that is often overlooked.... consider.

Those people would CONSIDER voting for a sales tax. It did not say "Will Vote" for a sales tax or similar terminology. They would consider it depending on uses, duration, etc.

That is where things get muddy.

When asked how long the sales tax should apply, here are the answers.

Of those 59.1%, where do they fall in this chart? If they said they wanted to see 10 year duration, like 111 people said, would they be ok with 5 years or 20 years if that is what was decided? Or are they set on 10 years and nothing else?

That 59.1% can shrink very quickly if their support for the local option was contingent on the exact details, which I presume many would be.

What about uses? Here is what the survey results say.

What if those 182 people that want to see money used for land conservation are in the 59.1% of respondents? Would they vote against the sales tax if it was used for Roads or Stormwater or some other use? Are they only voting for it if its used for land conservation?

What about the 12.6% of the undecided voters? Could they move either direction based on usage or duration? What would sway them to either side?

We see from the results that Road paving is the highest priority. What if that is where the BOCC decides to throw all the money? The sales tax is then only used for road resurfacing/paving. Would that be enough to get through? I am not sure.

A lot of people raised concerns about the local government with this survey. Did their questions get answered from these meetings? Will they get answered as we move forward? Chances are, if they still have questions on if they can trust the government come November, they are not voting to approve this.

Here is my suggestion, but requires the Chamber to do a few more things.

Although statistics was one of my favorite classes in college, I am not a survey expert by any means. But I do know surveys can show whatever data the collector wants it to show based on the information collected.

So why not do more community outreach and get a larger sample using the data that is already collected.

Ask questions like:

• "If the money was used entirely for residential road resurfacing, would you support it?"
• "If the sales tax was for 5 years, would you support it".... "If it was for 10 years would you support it"...
• "If the sales tax split funds between Roads and Fire/EMS, would you support it"...

Ask very specific questions based on the data that was collected. That will then allow commissioners to look at the data and decide the best route forward. They need to know exactly what the community wants and would support or not support, and while this is a great start to that, this is anything but exact.

Currently, we don't know exactly what people will or will not support. We only have ideas and numbers next to them. We do not know if they will support things they did not check the box next to or if they would support only those items.

The survey also did not ask about current taxes. Will people vote for this if it is not tied to a reduction in property tax millage? In other words, BOCC keeps the current tax rate and the sales taxes add an additional $25m to the budget (to be used ONLY as the referendum states).

Or will the community ONLY support this if the BOCC ties it to a reduction in millage rate. For instance, if road resurfacing is selected as the use of the funds, will voters only support that if the BOCC reduces the general fund for road resurfacing down to zero? Or will they support the current spending on roads as well as the sales tax to be used on roads?

We do not know because it was not asked. But voters absolutely will ask that in the voting booth and then decide if they support it.

Some people mentioned that in their comments... "Would pay the 1% if the county lowered property taxes"... but will they support it if they don't? I presume that this person is one of the 59.1% who would consider voting for it.

We have great data collected, now let us use it and hammer down specifics and find out what voters will and will not support.

That is not to fault the Chamber. I do not think specificity was the goal. I think it was a temperature check so to speak to see what the community thought. Again, they took this up on their own initiative to gather the data and did a good job at doing that. I just think we need some more data based on the data they collected to get a better picture of the support of this sales tax referendum.

There is still A LOT to discuss, but here is the thing. This CAN NOT be rushed through. I cannot stress this enough. We have to do this right and if that means pushing it back to 2028, then so be it. If you rush it and put it on the ballot in November and it fails, not sure you get another chance at it.

I know it is more work and I do appreciate the work that has been done so far. I will also volunteer to help, but I think we need to do a bit more work on this before we tell the commissioners to pick what is best.