Marksville sales tax is lone item on Aug. 15 ballot

There's only one little proposition affecting only one little city involving one little penny of sales tax on the Aug. 15 election ballot. For the City of Marksville, the election is certainly not of little importance.

The 1-cent sales tax for general operations had been a crucial part of Marksville's public funding for many years. Apparently too many years. Its expiration date slipped up on city officials in 2018 and it actually expired at the end of that year.

With people being creatures of habit, and the city in a habit of collecting the sales tax, the city continued to collect the $1.6 million of sales tax throughout 2019. In the first week of January, the snafu was discovered and the city stopped putting the sales tax into its coffers.

The tax was still collected from many businesses during the year, but the money was put into an escrow account where it cannot be spent by the city. It is hoped the state will allow Marksville to have the money if voters approve the tax on Aug. 15. Nobody has said what will happen to the escrow account if voters reject the tax.

Mayor John Lemoine has said it is in Marksville voters' best interest to restore the 1-cent sales tax. If that tax is defeated, and it goes away for good, there will have to be drastic cutbacks in services -- including fire and police services.

Those kind of comments are not meant as threats to scare people into voting for the tax -- although the financial picture painted of a Marksville without that 1-cent tax is pretty scary.

When the expired sales tax was discovered and collections were put in escrow, Marksville found itself staring at an $800,000 hole where tax revenue used to be. City officials tightened their belt, made some cuts and put the sales tax on the May ballot. The "best case scenario" was that the tax would be approved and collections would begin in time to be included in the 2020-21 budget year that began on July 1.

Then COVID hit. Many things were stalled. The May election was postponed to July. There was hopes of an approval and collections beginning by the end of the year. Then the election was postponed to August. Now the "best case" picture is for the restored sales tax to be in place and producing revenue MAYBE for a few weeks of the Christmas shopping season -- but probably closer to Martin Luther King Day or even Valentine's Day.

Of course, there are the "negative Nellies" who are already taking bets on how long after this one is beaten will it take for the City Council to call another 1-cent sales tax election.

There are questions about whether the city will somehow have to "give back" the 2019 sales tax collections or if someone should be punished in some way. There are also questions about what happens to the sales tax receipts put in escrow.

Some have suggested that if the tax is passed, the city voluntarily cut the term of the sales tax by two years so that it will come back for renewal at the same time it would have had the city been alert and sought renewal in 2018, before it expired.

If the tax fails, the assumption might be made that it would have failed in 2018 and thus not been able to be collected in 2019.

One thing is certain, with the election two weeks away there isn't likely to be any concrete answers handed down before voters make their decision on the tax proposal.