Vance board backs multiple-choice sales tax increase

A possible education-dedicated 1-cent increase in the local sales tax survived a lengthy Vance County Board of Commissioners discussion Monday night. But the commissioners tossed around enough options and preferences and alternatives before and after passing a resolution on the sales tax that school board members were left uncertain whether they’d won.

There are a few certainties.

The most important is the purpose of the proposed sales tax increase: meeting the facility needs of Vance County Schools. In December the Board of Education sent the commissioners a $28.1 million facilities proposal, including about $20 million for a third middle school and a replacement for Clark Street Elementary School.

After getting a negative if unofficial response to a request to finance that capital program with a bond referendum, the school board began exploring financial alternatives. On Monday the board sent the commissioners a consensus request to enact a 1-cent increase in the sales tax, with the estimated $3 million per year in additional revenue dedicated to the schools’ building needs.

Instead of putting the burden on property owners, who County Manager Jerry Ayscue has said would face a property tax increase of 15 or 16 cents per $100 of value to pay off a $28.1 million school bond, the sales tax would bring in money from all Vance residents, plus people from neighboring counties who drive here to shop and eat.

Ayscue said last week that the sales tax is preferable to a property tax increase to finance the serious needs of the school system.

The move to raise the overall sales tax in Vance County to 8 percent would require approval from the General Assembly, so the school board asked that the Board of Commissioners make a formal request for such legislation. Only Mecklenburg County has such a local-option sales tax, but at least four counties have pending bills to add half a penny or a penny to their sales tax.

“Our chance is better with the Pitt County bill,” Ayscue said after the meeting.

Legally, the legislation could authorize a county to enact the tax either by vote of the commissioners or vote of the public in a referendum.

All six of the commissioners at Monday night’s meeting — Eddie Wright was absent — spoke in favor of funding the schools’ facility needs, and all indicated their support for the sales tax as a way to raise the money. And all backed the referendum route as the way to enact the sales tax.

But then things got confusing.

Ayscue’s recommendation to the commissioners in his printed report called for “appropriate action to request legislative authority to enact an additional one cent sales tax by public referendum as soon as possible in Vance County for the purpose of funding public school and community college capital outlay needs.”

At the start of Monday’s discussion, Ayscue amended his own recommendation to read “up to an additional one cent sales tax,” giving the commissioners more flexibility in the future.

None of the commissioners had a problem with that change, but the inclusion of the community college in the resolution was another matter.

“I’ve never had a request from the community college” for capital funding, Board of Commissioners Chairman Tim Pegram said, adding that he’ll expect one if Vance-Granville Community College suddenly has access to $3 million a year through the sales tax.

He said the school system needs the money, and he believes that Vance voters are more likely to pass a referendum that specifies the money would go to the schools.

Ayscue explained that he included the community college not to meet any expected need, but to align the Vance resolution with local legislation pending on behalf of Pitt County. The Pitt bill, however, says the increase will be 1 cent, not up to 1 cent.

Commissioner Deborah Brown noted that the Pitt legislation says the money would go for school capital needs “or” community college capital needs, not “and.” That difference in conjunction made a huge difference, she said.

Ayscue agreed and said he even considered using “and/or.”

That led Commissioner Terry Garrison to propose an amendment to Commissioner Wilbur Boyd’s motion on the matter. Boyd had proposed Ayscue’s exact recommendation. Garrison proposed changing the “and” to an “or.”

Commissioner Tommy Hester liked the idea that the “or” would allow the commissioners to dedicate all of the money to the school system, but Commissioner Danny Wright said he didn’t want to mislead county voters.

Unlike Pegram, Wright said he thought that combining the schools and community college in one referendum would help the proposal win voter approval. He therefore said he would always vote to use the money for both purposes.

Garrison took a middle path, saying that the community college should get something, “even if it’s only a dollar,” but it didn’t have to be anything close to an even split.

Throwing a twist into the discussion, Ayscue said his discussions with state legislators indicated that the local legislation would have a better chance in the General Assembly if it included the community college, but he accepted Pegram’s argument that the referendum would have better prospects with Vance voters if it covered only the school system.

The commissioners proceeded to debate whether to include the community college, whether they even had a choice if they piggybacked on Pitt County’s bill and whether Vance would be better off with its own legislation.

Brown suggested letting Ayscue and the area’s three legislators work out the details.

In the end, that’s basically what the commissioners did.

They unanimously passed a motion asking the General Assembly for authorizing legislation to allow Vance County to hold a referendum on a sales tax increase of up to 1 cent to support the capital needs of the school system and community college. By consensus, they also empowered Ayscue and the legislators to decide whether to try to join the Pitt legislation, whether to get Pitt legislators to make changes in that legislation, and whether to go it alone with a separate Vance bill. Brown even raised the option of pursing both routes: piggybacking on the Pitt bill and going it alone with a separate bill.

A separate bill would likely drop the community college but use the flexible “up to 1 cent” language. The Pitt bill would include the community college and set the rate increase at exactly 1 cent.

The deadline has passed for new local legislation, but at least two blank bills have been filed on Vance’s behalf. Ayscue said one of those blank bills would be the vehicle for Vance’s request.

Four Board of Education members — Chairman Tommy Riddle, Margaret Ellis, Gloria White and Robert Duke — watched the whole show and afterwards were steaming.

Already frustrated over years of inaction on their capital requests, they said they sent a simple resolution to the commissioners Monday: to seek legislation to enact a 1 cent increase in the sales tax to support the schools’ capital needs. They even included a copy of draft legislation Sen. Doug Berger has prepared to that effect.

They said the legislation should call for a penny increase, not “up to” 1 cent. Riddle said the flexible language was a suggestion from Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce President Bill Edwards.

Aggravated over the fiddling with the amount and the community college, Duke said of the school board’s request: “We should withdraw it.”

His colleagues didn’t agree, but they did want certainty in place of flexibility in the proposal. White said, “We need to know.”

Ellis, who already discussed the proposal with legislators, plans to contact them again today to specify what needs to be done to get the school system the money it needs. She said her understanding is that local legislation with unanimous local support usually passes the legislature with little trouble.

Schools Superintendent Norm Shearin has said the current capital plan, at least the sixth in four years, represents the bare-minimum needs of the school system, and the most critical part of the request is the third middle school, at a cost of about $12 million. The current middle schools hold a total of 2,200 sixth- to eighth-graders, but neither school should have more than about 800 students, Shearin said.

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