The Pima County Board of Supervisors has given the go-ahead to finalize a Sales Tax Implementation Plan Ordinance, and a half-cent sales tax Resolution.
The ordinance would set legal parameters for funding a road repair plan that would fix all unincorporated county paved roads within 10 years and provide more than $550 million to the county's cities and town for their transportation infrastructure maintenance and repair needs over the same period.
Meanwhile, the resolution would enact the half-cent sales tax needed to fund the road repair plan.
The ordinance is scheduled to be up for a vote on May 15th board meeting, and the resolution is scheduled for June 19th. June 19th is the deadlien for the final budget adoption.
If the ordinance is adopted, it would:
- Govern the implementation of a half-cent, countywide sales tax allocated over 10 years for the purposes of repairing and preserving paved roads throughout the county
- Allocate 100% of sales tax revenues for maintenance, repair, and rebuilding of roads
- Distribute proportional revenues from the sales tax to the municipalities based on a formula that considers population and Taxable Net Assessed Valuation
- Create a 10-year road repair plan for unincorporated Pima County with a list of each road segment by treatment type and schedule of when it will be improved to at least a fair condition
- Require an intergovernmental agreement with the Regional Transportation Authority to provide review and support of the sales tax implementation for Pima County and overview of the municipalities’ 10-year road repair plans
- Create a Commission for Economic Diversity and Prosperity to provide guidance on distribution of funding for low-income assistance to mitigate disproportionate effects the sales tax may have on low-income households
- Allocate an additional $3 million minimum annually for programs and services designed to assist low-income households, and to increase funding for this purpose by an additional $500,000 (or as recommended by the Commission established by the ordinance) each year the sales tax is in effect. Funding will not come from the sales tax
- Eliminate the 25-cent Road Repair Property Tax enacted by the board last year
If the resolution is adopted, it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2019. It would:
- Be temporary, ending 10 years after its effective date
- Place all of the sales tax revenue into a special Road Repair Fund
- Restrict use of the Road Repair Fund to the maintenance, repair and rebuilding of roads, and to repay debt obligations associated with same
- Require proportional amounts of the Road Repair Fund be distributed to the county’s cities and towns based on the formula set by the Sales Tax Ordinance
- Require the county to enter into an intergovernmental agreement with the Regional Transportation Authority or the Pima Association of Governments, if the RTA is not reauthorized by voters, to provide oversight of the county’s and municipalities’ road repair and maintenance programs and to annually audit the use of the Road Repair Fund by those jurisdictions
- Require the County to have the state Auditor General annually audit the Road Repair Fund
- Require automatic repeal of the sales tax if either the RTA or Auditor General audits find unauthorized use of the Road Repair Fund that hasn’t been immediately cured by the County
Under the proposed distribution formula in the ordinance, municipalities over 10 years would receive:
- Tucson - $424.2 million
- South Tucson - $3.8 million
- Marana - $54.7 million
- Oro Valley - $48.8 million
- Sahuarita - $25.6 million
The proposed 10-year plan and the proposed ordinance and resolution can be found by clicking here. The website also includes a map where county residents can look up their address and see when their road will be fixed within the 10 years if the sales tax is approved.
