Some Vermilion County school administrators say they are excited about the opportunity to start shifting some of the funding load for schools away from property taxes. On Tuesday, voters across the county are being asked whether they would support increasing the sales tax by a penny on every dollar spent… with the money going to support school facility improvements.
But Oakwood Unit 76 Superintendent Gary Lewis says there are some areas where the sales tax would not increase…
”If you’re buying groceries, it won’t affect your grocery bill. It won’t affect if you have to get medication. It won’t affect if you buy a new car,” said Lewis. ”Farmers, if they buy large implements – it won’t affect that. It’s kind of based – what I feel – is more on the tourism part. If you go to restaurants, hotels, things like that. Like, Champaign – they have the U. of I. and obviously kids come in and buy that stuff at your retail markets and some of that stuff counts. But here,” added Lewis, ”you know, you have the National Junior College Tournament with people coming to town. And the Balloon Festival – which is huge — (with) people coming to town. And it kind of allows outside people to help pay for your schools.”
Lewis outlined some of the areas where the Oakwood District plans to use the new money if the vote is approved….
”We’ve been doing parking lots, a lot of safety stuff, we’ve done. We’ve added cameras over the years and some other stuff. We’ve had a couple of companies come out and just look to see if we can improve safety in our buildings and get better with the climate anymore. That money could go directly toward that. And that’s all this kind of stuff could go to,” added Lewis. ”It can’t go toward salaries. So I can’t pay my maintenance people any more because we get this additional influx of money. It has to go to building projects.”
But Danville Mayor Scott Eisenhauer is strongly opposed to raising the sales tax. He thinks it would hurt local sales….
”My biggest concern is looking at where our sales tax is now compared to other communities around us – we are certainly one of the highest. Not completely out of proportion, but certainly higher. You add one-percent on top of that and now we become the highest sales tax community south of Cook County. That is not an advantageous position for us to be in,” says the Mayor.
And Mayor Eisenhauer is concerned that raising the sales tax could drive shoppers out of Danville….
”Anytime we see what’s going on nationally with the decline of brick and mortar retail outlets, it concerns us about the future of sales tax from our own prospective. Then when you add another one-percent on top of that and drive us much higher than any of our comparable (cities) around the middle part of the state – then I think it puts us at a huge disadvantage in trying to attract shoppers, trying to attract retailers here, and then not only attract – but maintain the retailers that we have here today,” said the Mayor during an interview with VermilionCountyFirst.com News.
New revenues from the sales tax, if approved, can only be used to improve school facilities or retire new or existing building bonds.
It is estimated that the Oakwood Unit 76 School District would receive $421-thousand dollars a year in new revenues if the vote is approved.
And here are estimates on what some of the other school districts in Vermilion County would receive in the way of new money:
- Westville Unit 2 Schools — $550,000
- Hoopeston Area Schools — $436,000
- Rossville-Alvin Schools — $130,000
- Bismarck-Henning Schools — $375,000
- Salt Fork Schools — $372,000
