From AL.com:

Huntsville City Council members seem cool to the idea of passing a city-only sales tax for schools, saying the city already does plenty for the city school system through special tax districts and earmarked money from the city’s operating budget.

All of the council members that could be reached for comment either opposed increasing the sales tax outright or seemed subtly dismissive.

Back in October of 2006 I made the case that Huntsville and Madison were simply riding the coattails of Madison County.  They saw the opportunity to get some more revenue with minimal effort (or so they thought).  The “smell test” for me was the fact that Huntsville generates about 76% of sales in the county, but would only get to keep less than 50% of the revenue under the county wide plan.  The county wide tax would export about $7 million dollars of revenue out of Huntsville.  If the city leaders in Huntsville saw the need to increase school funding they would impose a city-only tax increase and reap the full rewards.  The fact that they didn’t - and still will not - tells me that Huntsville doesn’t need the money.

I’m not so callous as to deny that Madison County needs the money.  If their school management had done a better job managing their scarce resources in the past and if they could come up with a stable, coherent plan today they might have an easier job selling a Madison County specific tax increase to the people.

• Madison County Sales Tax Vote Tomorrow
• Fewer transferees from BRAC, more tax revenue
• MadCo school board kowtows to Dale Strong
• If you buy it, they will tax us
• Madison County taxes to pay for Limestone County school?

This entry was posted by Brian on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 5:12 am and is filed under Madison County, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.