San Juan County voters last week handed their local government a lifeline of new revenue in the form of a three-tenths of 1 percent increase in the local sales tax.
If you’re doing the math, that’s .003, or 30 cents on a $100 purchase, with most groceries, professional services — like doctors and lawyers — and prescription medication excluded.
The sales-tax measure, Proposition 1 on the ballot, slipped under the primary-election wire with a victory in one of the lightest elections in recent memory. With 600 ballots or so left to count, the measure drew 53 percent of 5,884 ballots tallied as of Aug. 9, or 2,788 votes, with voter-turnout hovering just a notch above 47 percent.
Only 312 votes separated failure from success, but after two tallies, with 4,258 ballots counted on election night and another 1,226 the next, the margin was large enough and voting-trend consistent enough for Auditor Milene Henley, manager of the County Elections Office, to declare Prop. 1 a winner.
Sheriff Rob Nou was elated, if not surprised, by the result.
“Surprised? I don’t know that I’d say that,” Nou said. “I think it’s more like relieved, and very grateful.”
In recent weeks, the Sheriff’s Department has been one of several agencies firmly planted in the crosshairs of the county budget team, tasked with having to balance a 2013 budget with a projected shortfall of $800,000, possibly more, on the revenue side of the county’s primary funding mechanism, its general fund.
Totaling $16.8 million in 2013, tentatively, the general fund pays the bulk of most county day-to-day expenses, but with roughly half that total restricted and earmarked solely for specific programs or personnel.
Of the half considered “discretionary,” County Administrator Bob Jean notes that about 50 percent of that amount, nearly $4 million, would flow into the sheriff’s budget if funding levels were to remain at status quo.
In addition to paying officer salaries, the sheriff’s budget also covers the cost of dispatch, 911, jail expenses, corrections and the emergency management department.
Cuts in the sheriff’s budget would be difficult to avoid, Jean said, without an influx of new and unrestricted revenue, which Prop. 1 will provide.
“What makes it harder now is that the county has been cutting positions for three years,” he said. “The cuts left now are very difficult ones.”
The three-tenths of 1 percent increase will nudge up the local sales-tax mark from 7.8 percent, among the lowest in the state, to 8.1 percent. Once it goes into effect, beginning Jan. 1, of next year, it is expected to generate roughly $1 million a year, 40 percent of which will, by state law, go directly to the Town of Friday Harbor.
While proceeds from Prop.1 are expected to help soften the county’s budgetary woes by generating $600,000 of new revenue each year, that new cache of cash must be used, in accordance with state law, exclusively on government services that fall into the category of public safety, such as law enforcement or criminal justice services, public health or road safety projects. It would, however, free up an equal amount of revenue in the general fund that has historically covered such expenses.
