SEQUIM — It will be back: A ballot measure to raise sales tax inside the city of Sequim, raising the rate from Clallam County’s 8.4 percent to 8.6 percent.
The Sequim City Council voted 5-1, with Walt Schubert dissenting, to ask voters to approve or reject a 0.2 percent sales tax increase in the Nov. 3 election.
If passed, the hike could pour an estimated $600,000 per year into the city’s street-fixing and -lighting fund and perhaps build some neighborhood sidewalks.
The increase would be “painless,” council member Susan Lorenzen has said.
$1 per $500
It would amount to $1 more in sales tax on a $500 washing machine, for example, or 8 extra cents on a $40 pair of gym shoes. And except for restaurant and deli fare, it would not affect food, nor would it be applied to prescriptions, utility rates, rent or mortgage payments.
But the tax hike would be felt by anybody who comes into Sequim to shop for clothes, souvenirs, tires, furniture and other taxable goods.
The increase, Mayor Laura Dubois has said, is a way to reap revenue beyond only city residents, to pay for road improvements, street and traffic lights and sidewalks.
She pushed for the increase last year when the City Council first put it on the November 2008 ballot, but the measure failed by a few dozen votes.
Council member Bill Huizinga opposed it then, saying people were having a hard enough time with the country’s economic downturn. But he’s since changed his mind about the measure.
“I still believe the timing is a little sad,” he said. “However, the cost of putting it on the ballot is justifiable, and considering how close it came to passing last time,” it’s worth asking the voters again.
The benefits of higher sales tax in Sequim would be noticeable on a daily basis, in the form of better streets, Dubois emphasized.
But if the measure passes in November, the city wouldn’t start collecting the added tax until 2010.
The increase would stay in effect for 10 years and end automatically.
Council member Ken Hays said he’s heard from local business people who support the hike but didn’t name any of them; he said he wasn’t sure if they wanted to be identified.
Schubert, by contrast, doesn’t believe Sequim’s merchants want goods to cost more here.
“People are out there suffering,” he said.
But the city too is struggling, with falling revenues and rising expenses. A new stream of money for streets would “take some of the pressure off the general fund,” Dubois said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
