PORT TOWNSEND — The Board of Jefferson County Commissioners will go to voters this fall for a two-tenths of 1 percent sales tax to fund roads projects.
The tax would be an increase from an existing one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax to three-tenths of 1 percent. The one-tenth of 1 percent tax was imposed, as allowed by state law, without a public vote last December.
Voters in unincorporated Jefferson County will vote on the measure in November.
“I consistently hear, ‘We want our roads to be maintained well,’” Commissioner Heather Dudley-Nollette said Monday. “We’ll see what the public says when we’ve put it on the ballot.”
If approved, the tax would remain in effect for 10 years, County Administrator Josh Peters said.
Last year’s tax had a six-month delay before the county began collection, Peters said.
“Essentially, we just started collecting that sales tax,” he added.
Also part of the December decision was a $20 license fee as a part of vehicle registration renewal.
Sales taxes from businesses located in unincorporated Jefferson County have always been recouped by the county, Peters said, but in recent years, online sales taxes started being received by the county as well.
“If you also order something from somewhere else, an online supplier — Amazon or whatever supplier is your favorite — then, if it’s delivered to your house, that sales tax actually now goes to Jefferson County as well, under the new rules in the last couple years,” Peters said.
The commissioners also passed a resolution to form For and Against committees for the ballot measure.
The county already has solicited participation in For or Against committees for the ballot measure, Peters said. He cited a press release, as well as some social media posts.
County residents Jean Ball and Tom Thiersch have volunteered on the For Committee, Peters said. The Against Committee has yet to see any interest, he added.
“If you don’t have members, really for either committee, that’s not the end of the issue,” Peters said. “You don’t have to even have these committees. You have to just solicit interest earnestly, which I believe that we have done.”
While there is still time to join either committee, Aug. 12 is the deadline for developing the statements that will go into the voters’ pamphlet, Peters said.
Committee members would have until Aug. 15 to submit rebuttals to the opposing statements, Jefferson County Auditor Brenda Huntingford said.
Dudley-Nollette said she takes questions about increased taxation seriously.
A theme she has become familiar with in her first seven months as a commissioner is local government’s struggle to do more with less, she said.
“Particularly counties being limited to a 1 percent increase per year in property taxes, whereas we know that costs have been going up at least 6 percent a year, for many years,” she said. “That’s just an equation that doesn’t pencil and will continue to not pencil. You can’t limit income and increase expenses and have money left at the end of the day.”
Dudley-Nollette said she hopes the county can find ways to open the conversation with the public to ask what it really wants local government to do for them.
Ball, the auditor’s office contact for the For Committee, offered her support for the increased tax in a public comment.
“I am not often in favor of jacking up taxes, but this is entirely necessary and required,” Ball said. “Everybody uses roads. Whether or not you drive, you take advantage of the infrastructure that is the road system. Your services arrive that way. Your service providers arrive that way. Your food, your goods, everything depends on the roads, and we must maintain them.”
Ball said that, in her recent conversations, she has come across support for the increased tax.
The deadline to get the measure on the ballot is today, Peters said.
Commissioner Greg Brotherton noted that he spoke with Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour, currently on vacation, before she left.
“She’s fully in favor of this too,” Brotherton said. “I’m slightly hesitant, except for the timeline, to make this large decision to put something on the ballot without our reigning chair, but she’s in favor, I just want to get that on the record.”
Brotherton said maintaining roads is something that impacts everyone.
“It’s a need, not a want,” he said.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com
