Voters reject Concerned Citizens call for lower sales tax rate

Dec. 1– Twenty-one percent of Hardin County’s 16,112 registered voters turned out for today's referendum deciding one of the most controversial local issues in years.

By a vote of 804 to 2,553, the election determined the local option sales tax will remain unchanged at 2.5 percent.

Concerned Citizens For Community Schools, a grassroots group opposed to the current school consolidation project, forced the county-wide referendum by obtaining some 3,000 signatures on a petition calling for a special election on the sales tax rate.

The organization argued the Hardin County Board of Education and county commission broke their word when officials decided earlier this year to scrap a 1997 long-range school renovation and construction plan that did not involve consolidation.

Voters in 1997 overwhelmingly approved a one cent increase in the local option sales tax rate based on that plan and would not have done so at the time if they thought community schools would be shuttered, Concerned Citizens contended.

Revenue generated by the sales tax hike was earmarked to finance the current school construction efforts and has nearly retired the debt on the high school expansion and renovation begun that same year.

Based on the premise of a broken promise, Concerned Citizens sought to repeal the 1997 sales tax increase, saying it would help "rein in rogue government."

Concerned Citizens faced united opposition from the Hardin County Commission, Savannah City Commission and the local chamber of commerce.

All three contended lowering the sales tax rate would not stop the ongoing consolidation project involving construction of two new 550-student schools and the closing of aging Walnut Grove, Whites, Walker, Nixon and North elementary schools.

The chamber and local governments also predicted disrupting the sales tax funding source would result in dramatic and rapid county and Savannah property tax increases.