From the Elkhart Truth:
With the dust settled on the 2014 budget, city leaders are now looking ahead to the future and how to raise revenues to continue providing services to residents.
Before budget hearings began, the Goshen Chamber of Commerce convened a task force to prioritize services.
With the city looking at a funded budget for next year rather than a balanced one, Mayor Allan Kauffman also requested they provide recommendations that could raise revenues in the coming years.
The task force concluded that the city has a revenue problem rather than a spending problem and came up with several suggestions that the city could take advantage of.
A hot topic last year, a trash removal fee is the most familiar of the task force’s recommendations.
The city originally discussed the possibility of instituting a fee last fall.
Though the measure didn’t gain any initial traction, Kauffman has said the issue would likely resurface as the city continued to battle the effects of property tax caps.
Kauffman, however, said discussion on the trash fee has been placed “on the backburner.” The fee, which the task force dubbed an “environmental fee,” falls behind several other options the city will look into.
One recommendation the city will be looking at is a 1 percent local option food and beverage tax.
Kauffman said the tax is estimated to raise between $600,000 and $650,000 a year if the state legislature will allow the tax and if it would pass in the city.
Council president Jim McKee said he would be in favor of establishing the food and beverage tax if the state grants the city the option.
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Another avenue the city and Elkhart County are currently working at is lobbying state legislators for some sort of local option income tax.
County Commissioner Mike Yoder explained the local option income taxes at a recent meeting of the Elkhart County Council.
“We could increase local option taxes by 1 percent, which would generate property tax relief, which reduces circuit breaker losses,” he said.
A second option would be to “pass a levy freeze, which everybody agrees is not a good idea, and then if we pass one of those, we can do a .25 percent increase for public safety.”
Kauffman said the local option income and local option food and beverage taxes would provide the most substantial help to the city.
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http://www.elkharttruth.com/article/20131112/NEWS01/711129946
