Andover residents to vote on revised sales tax proposal

Andover voters will decide Tuesday whether to approve a 0.75 percent sales tax after striking down a proposal for a 1 percent sales tax in November. The 0.75 percent tax would amount to three-quarters of a cent per dollar to a sales bill.

The sales tax would be in effect for the next five years or until enough money has been raised to fund three projects city leaders have deemed city needs, said Mark Detter, Andover city administrator.

Those projects are a new ladder truck for the Andover Fire Department, restrooms for Andover Central Park and a larger facility to house street maintenance equipment.

“We’re looking at a street shop that’s 35 years old and can’t properly store equipment,” Detter said. “We’ve got millions of dollars of equipment sitting outside – it’s just not a very good stiuation. We’re going to have to do something. We have a fire truck that’s nearly 30 years old, and we will have to replace it in some method. And we really need bathrooms at Central Park. It’s a heavily used park and there are no public restrooms right now. We want to impress upon our citizens that we’re going to have to do them; we’re just hoping the sales tax is the way they choose to pay for it.”

In November, Andover voters rejected a 1-cent sales tax proposal largely for two reasons, Detter said: The proposal did not list specific projects for which the money would be used, and it did not have a sunset, or ending, date.

The proposal also mentioned that the sales tax would bring about property tax relief in Andover. The newly drafted proposal does not feature such language.

Andover voters rejected the first proposal.

“The public didn’t want an indefinite tax,” Detter said. “They wanted it for a definite purpose. I think the mayor and the city council got a lot of feedback.”

Andover City Council member Byron Stout was the only member who voted against the November proposal. He said he supports the revised proposal only because it specifies what the money is being used for and when the tax will end.

“It was a blank check,” Stout said. “It listed all these capital improvement projects with no order, no organization, no priority, and they were a combination of wants and needs. Voters apparently agreed with my point of view, because it was shot down.”

Stout said that once the money is raised for the three projects, residents of Andover will be able to voice their opinion about future capital improvement projects.

“The government loves tax, and once a tax is levied, more than likely you’re never going to see” the rates come back down, Stout said. “That’s not how we’re going to run business in Andover. Every time I sit on the bench and look at these things, I realize this is not my money. This is someone else’s money, so how should I spend it?”

The city of Andover levied a similar tax in 2013 to help fund construction of a new city hall, Detter said. It was slated to end in four years, but sufficient construction money was raised in three, he said.

“We’re hoping if it generates enough money we can sunset it earlier,” Detter said. “As soon as we collect enough money to pay for these projects, we’ll sunset it. We’re projecting that could be five years, but if it’s any faster than that, we’ll sunset the sales tax.”

Andover residents currently pay 7.4 percent in sales taxes, which includes the state sales tax of 6.15 percent.

“We already pay 1-cent (tax) for streets in Andover, and the county has a 0.25-cent tax for emergency communication. We’d be adding three-quarters of a cent, which would put us about even with Newton, Mulvane, Goddard, Haysville, and a few other area towns,” Detter said. “It’s higher than Wichita, certainly.”

The election is Tuesday.

This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 7:58 PM with the headline "Andover residents to vote on revised sales tax proposal."