Possibility of St. Louis County vote on emergency radio sales tax fading
The possibility that St. Louis County voters will consider on April 7 an 0.1-cent sales tax to build and initially operate a countywide emergency radio system is fading, but has not disappeared.
The St. Louis County Municipal League is behind the tax, but the county council must put such a proposal on the ballot. A bill for an election on the matter must be introduced today if the council is to avoid using extraordinary procedures to get it on the April 7 ballot. The council meets at 6 p.m. The introduction of such a bill appears unlikely.
Tim Fischesser, the league’s executive director, this morning said the league is not pushing for the introduction of a bill today. A substantial number of league members are concerned that they lack time to organize and finance a campaign and be successful in April, he said. But the league has not given up on an April vote, he said.
Several county council members have indicated they want to make sure that league members could run a strong campaign before they would vote to put the issue on the ballot.
The sales tax would raise about $15 million a year and finance an $80 million radio system that would allow police, fire and other emergency service workers at an emergency scene to talk to each other via radio. Voters in November rejected a 1.85-cent sales tax on out-of-state purchases; part that tax’s revenue would have paid for the communications system.
The Federal Communications Commission is requiring public safety agencies to make major changes to their equipment, mainly narrowing the radio frequencies they use, by 2012.
Radio system supporters are concerned that once agencies start working on their own to meet the federal requirement, installing a countywide system would become very difficult or impossible.
The league faces a balancing act, Fischesser said. If jurisdictions upgraded equipment on their own “it makes our job of making a comprehensive system more difficult. But we don’t want to try that off for a failed election,” he said.
The county has included the communications system in the 95 items in its nearly $1.8 billion proposal for federal economic stimulus money. But no one knows what the requirements for receiving that money would be and how the federal government would administer it.
There are a lot of unfunded mandates that will be removed in the next year. Dooley needs to make his case to Obama, not demand his overtaxed residents dig deeper. Charlie, we’ve got almost 8% unemployment here. No more taxes. Voters don’t care about the Municipal League, whatever that is. They care about not paying any more taxes. The number of signatures required to recall Dooley is 20% of the votes cast for Governor in the last election. That’s a lot. But, I think Dooley is bound and determined to get people mad enough to start standing in the cold to get the petitions signed. Dooley…quit listening to your clerks and start listening to the voters.