During the July 26, 2016, village of New Richmond council meeting, resident Robert Lees shared his thoughts about an ordinance that would put an earnings tax increase to maintain emergency services on the presidential ballot.

During the July 26, 2016, village of New Richmond council meeting, resident Robert Lees shared his thoughts about an ordinance that would put an earnings tax increase to maintain emergency services on the presidential ballot.
By Megan Alley
Sun staff

During the village of New Richmond council meeting on July 26, residents weighed in on an ordinance that would put an earnings tax increase to maintain emergency services on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Currently, the village imposes a 1 percent earnings tax on people who live or work in the village; residents who pay taxes to other municipalities are given a 0.5 percent tax credit.

The proposed ordinance, which the council unanimously sent to the November ballot, would increase the earnings tax to 2 percent and maintain the 0.5 percent tax credit.

Council passed the current 1 percent earnings tax in late 2009; an increase beyond the 1 percent has to be approved by voters.

The current earnings tax generates approximately $500,000 per year. An increase to 2 percent would generate another $500,000, which will be equally split between the New Richmond Fire and Emergency Services Departments and the New Richmond Police Department.

Resident Bob Lees, while delivering praise to local officials and emergency services staff, suggested the village become “more fiscally efficient” by sharing services.

“I know in the past, you’ve looked at possibly cooperating with the sheriff’s department on policing and the fire department through a shared fire district,” he said. “It just needs to be studied, that’s all I’m saying.”

Scott Wolf, New Richmond resident and assistant chief of the fire and EMS departments, spoke in favor of the earnings tax increase.

“We will need money next year; we are running bare bones,” he said. “And, as far as our police department, we’ve talked about the drugs, the break-ins and the heroin problems, and I’ve said from day one that we need more police officers; whatever the police department needs we have to support them.”

He added, “Either we pay more earnings tax or we pay more real estate tax, or our cars are broken into, our neighbors are dropping dead and our property values eventually start going down; any way you cut it, it’s going to cost us.”

Resident Anna Marck spoke against the earnings tax increase.

“I don’t believe they should put any more taxes on the village people,” she said. “We can barely feed our families.”

She added, “Don’t take it out on the people; we don’t have it.”

Mayor Ramona Carr reminded the public that the council was deciding on an ordinance of resolution that places the earnings tax increase on the ballot.

“Then the people can decide,” Carr added. “Council is not voting to put this in effect; it’s up to the people to vote how they want.”

Marck responded, “I don’t even want to see it on the ballot.”

Marck, a recovering addict, later suggested that the council look at attracting drug addiction recovery services to the village, such as addiction specialists, drug treatment centers and sober living housing, as a way to generate additional tax revenue.

During council discussion, council woman Mary Allen said the council was in a tough situation regarding the vote.

“No one ever wants to raise taxes, but we didn’t want to arbitrarily cut services either,” she explained. “So, the whole idea is that we put it on the ballot and we educate people as to what’s at risk, because if there’s no money, we would have no choice but to cut services that they receive today.”

She added, “It’s a democracy; let the people decide. If they don’t want it, then we’ll have to decide what to cut. If they want it, then we’ll do everything we can to maintain services as close to what they are.”

Council woman Amanda Davidson responded to Lees’ suggestion of sharing services.

“Obviously, minutes aren’t getting read if people don’t know these things, but we have talked about having the sheriff’s department take over, which would actually cost us more money than what we’re running the police department with now,” she explained. “We’ve also talked about sharing services; that’s come up many, many times in meetings.”

She added, “I love that there’s so many people here tonight, I really do, but I wish we saw this many people every meeting.”

Allen added that the council has spent a lot of time combing through the departments’ annual budgets to try to figure out how to minimize expenses.

“We’ve done a lot in the past two years to try to figure out ways to minimize expenses and keep costs low,” she said. “I don’t believe that we’ve not tried to optimize our budgets.”