Manhattan residents will have a chance to vote on increasing the sales tax dedicated to street maintenance to 0.5% this November after the Manhattan City Commission unanimously voted in support of putting the increase on the ballot on Aug. 18.
If residents vote in favor of the new street sales tax, it will go into effect on April 1, 2027, and will last 10 years. The tax on purchases will equal a half-cent per dollar.
“The citizens of Manhattan voted to put a 0.2% sales tax increase back in 2016 that ran for 10 years, so that’s 20 cents on every $100 you spend,” Brian Johnson, Manhattan director of public works, said. “That sales tax initiative ends this December.”
Danielle Dulin, Manhattan city manager, said that now, 10 years after the initial implementation of the 0.2% sales tax, there is still a lot of work to do regarding Manhattan’s roads and infrastructure.
“What that 0.2% generates right now is about $2.5 million to $3 million,” Dulin said. “However, after COVID we saw an increase in the cost of labor and asphalt. We’re not able to do as much with the $2.5 million to $3 million as we had hoped in 2016. … As we are looking at what we need to do as far as taking care of our streets, we proposed to the city commission to not only renew that dedicated street sales tax but to also increase it to a 0.5%.”
Johnson and Dulin said the 0.5% sales tax will generate a total of about $8 million annually for street repairs. Of that total, $6 million will go towards local street maintenance, while $2 million will go towards arterials.
According to the City Administration’s commission meeting agenda discussing the proposed street sales tax, the renewal and increase of the sales tax will address the need to increase Manhattan’s Pavement Condition Index (PCI) from an overall 60 to a 70-75 (the higher the PCI, the better the condition). Many of Manhattan’s local and neighborhood streets are in poor condition, according to the PCI score scale, and community survey results provided in the meeting’s presentations showed that 90% of respondents ranked street repairs and maintenance as the first or second-highest need in the city.
“The reason we’re requesting a sales tax is because our current funding outside of sales tax is through gas tax, but the federal gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993 and the state gas tax since 2004,” Johnson said. “There’s less gas being burned today than in 1993, so we have more cars on the road that are driving more miles, but they’re getting better gas mileage. Therefore, we have less funding for street repairs through gas tax. That’s where that sales tax comes in; it’s a supplement to that gas tax.”
