Marion likely to put projects on hold after tax extension defeat

MARION - The defeat last week of an extension to the local option sales tax didn't just affect planning for flood protection.

The city of Marion, for example, had planned on receiving an extra $5 million per year starting in 2014 if the proposed 10-year extension had passed.

On Thursday night, the city passed a $31 million budget for the next fiscal year. Marion City Manager Lon Pluckhahn said that budget didn't include any anticipated spending from the tax extension, so there was nothing to trim. However, some future civic spending plans will have to be put on hold.

Pluckhahn said one of the projects that will now have to wait is the Marion Public Library. Library director Doug Raber said the current building opened in 1996, but it wasn't designed to handle 1,000 people each day.

The city is planning a $6 million to $7 million expansion for the library, and if the sales tax extension had passed, design work could have begun next year, with construction perhaps beginning in 2014.

Raber said everyone involved will now have to step back and see what the community will support via a fundraising effort.

Major street work and construction of a new police station, using revenue from the existing local option sales tax that took effect in 2009, begins soon in Marion. But after the tax ends in 2014, Pluckhahn said residents will notice an immediate slowdown in spending on capital improvement projects.

“It will tail back off without having the extension in place,” Pluckhahn said, adding “so the perception will be less work being done.”

Pluckhahn said he had hoped to squeeze street work that would normally take about 25 years into just 10 years using money from a sales tax extension. The extension's failure also likely will mean a delay in building a third fire station in the city, he said.

Raber said many people are asking him when work starts on an expansion that remains a community priority. He said the answer after the tax extension defeat is, “I don't know.”