When the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority proposed five years ago to switch its local funding source from a property tax to a sales tax, a pair of suburban Toledo communities effectively vetoed the idea.
At the time, Maumee officials said a sales-tax increase would hurt local businesses, who faced the prospect of losing customers to competitors in neighboring Wood County, where the sales tax was already 0.25 percentage points less than Lucas County’s 7 percent.
With county commissioners now proposing to add a quarter-penny to the Lucas County sales tax, Maumee Mayor Richard Carr says the likelihood of his city changing its position on a sales tax for transit isn’t very good.
But James Gee, the transit authority’s general manager, said he believes fears of sales-tax shopping by consumers are overblown.
TARTA now collects 2.5 mills of property taxes to subsidize its operations — separate 1-mill and 1.5-mill levies that historically have had 10-year terms — in the seven municipalities and townships that are TARTA members ...
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2015/01/13/Communities-still-oppose-sales-tax-funding-for-transit.html#5TD7SAq383QpldOE.99
