Sumter County voters reject penny sales tax for community projects
3rd round of 'Penny for Progress' initiative would have kept 1-cent sales tax in place
After a 14-year run, a penny sales tax will be discontinued after Sumter County voters opposed the ballot referendum.
It was a close call. Sumter County voters opposed the Sumter County General Obligation Bond Referendum for a third Capital Penny Sales Tax, with 50.84%, or 13,909 votes.
The Capital Penny Sales Tax was a 1% sales tax that funneled pennies to an initiative to support community projects referred to as "Penny for Progress," which is a referendum that Sumter voters approved first in 2008 and again in 2014.
The first referendum funded 16 projects and ushered in a $75 million boost to the county's economy, and the second, which is ongoing, funded 28 projects and cost $75.6 million. The projects fall under four categories: public safety, infrastructure and facilities, transportation and quality of life.
The third penny was projected to rake in $117 million over a span of seven years to fund 34 projects at a total of $107,266,500 in projected revenue; the remaining $10 million was to be used as a "cushion."
Now, those projects – a majority of which reached rural communities in the county, expanded outdoor recreation, much-needed public safety equipment and vehicle upgrades and road repairs – will not come to fruition.
“I’m very shocked. I’m very surprised,” Mayor David Merchant said. “I thought the track record of the penny, the last two pennies and what it’s done to help our community all around the city and the county, that folks would have understood how we could continue the momentum with this penny moving forward.”
Merchant said he is disappointed to lose projects that would have supported Sumter’s youth, recreational opportunities, public safety upgrades for new fire trucks and radio and pager equipment for emergency services communication system.
“They’re very necessary items in our community that now we’re going to have to roll our sleeves up and fund those in a different way,” he said.
“It’s very disappointing in so many ways. I don’t know what we could have done different,” Sumter County Council Chairman Jim McCain said. “This kind of money that we would have been able to raise for all of these projects, this is not going to come about again without the county raising taxes.”
Even if the county raised taxes to the maximum millage rate allowed, it could only raise $1 million in a year. To raise $107 million would be impossible in this lifetime, McCain said.
“Thirty to 40% of the tax is paid by people who don’t even live in Sumter because of tourism and people driving through. It’s just very disappointing,” he said.
The current penny sales tax ends in 2023. Sumter County could propose another referendum on the 2024 General Election ballots, but McCain isn’t sure the county will push forward again.
“I’m not so even sure that the appetite is there to try this again,” McCain said. “We need to. There’s no way that we can raise the money that we raise with this penny any other way.”