SEQUIM — Sales tax in Sequim will not rise after all.
A proposition on the Nov. 4 general election ballot asked Sequim residents to hike their sales tax from the countywide 8.4 percent to 8.6 percent.
But the measure has lost by 61 votes, Clallam County Auditor Patty Rosand said Wednesday afternoon.
According to the latest count, 1,697 voters, or 50.92 percent, rejected the increase while 1,636, or 49.08 percent, voted for it.
“This is it,” Rosand said, “until we certify [the election] on the 25th.”
If more properly postmarked ballots do come in before then, it won’t be enough to make a difference in the race, she said.
The sales-tax measure ran a tight race on election night, when it had 1,133 votes in favor and 1,121 against.
Rosand said the lead turned into a loss as more ballots from a Sequim drop box were counted between Nov. 5 and Monday.
Susan Lorenzen, a Sequim City Council member and advocate for the tax hike, said that it could have generated $600,000 for sidewalks, “pavement rehabilitation” and other street repairs.
The city has a six-year transportation improvement plan with 38 projects on it, Lorenzen added, and the sales tax increase was one of few avenues to fund some of them.
‘Would have been painless’
“This would have been painless,” she said, since the two-tenths-of-1-cent hike would have meant fairly tiny amounts, such as 8 cents on a $40 restaurant check or $1 on a $500 set of tires.
The tax wouldn’t have affected food, gasoline or prescriptions.
Instead of trying to raise the sales tax, the city of Sequim instead might have formed local improvement districts, which assess a tax on property owners in older neighborhoods, to fund street and sidewalk work.
But that would have affected “people who can afford it least,” Lorenzen said.
Those who voted against the measure “just said a flat ‘no new taxes,'” she believes.
“I hope none of them complain about the roads.”
Bad timing
Bill Littlejohn, president of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the sales tax increase to foot road-repair bills “may well have been a good idea. But the timing was bad,” with the deepening economic slump.
“I hope they’ll run it again when the economy gets better,” he said.
“But it’s always tougher the second time.”
“We’ll definitely try again,” Lorenzen said, though she didn’t know how soon.
Rosand said the last time a sales-tax increase succeeded in Clallam County was in November 2003, when voters approved the hike to 8.4 percent to fund emergency 9-1-1 services countywide.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com
