Mayflower residents now have an option to add another cent to the city's existing one-cent sales tax.
Mayor Randy Holland proposed the tax increase, which would be dedicated entirely to addressing street and drainage problems, and the Mayflower City Council voted to put the tax increase on the May 20 ballot, where the issue can be decided by the voters of Mayflower.
If approved by the voters, the tax would almost triple the Mayflower Street Department's budget, saving a roads and drainage infrastructure that Holland says has been crumbling for years, despite the best efforts of an underfunded street department.
"Our streets right now are getting to the point that if they don't get that sales tax some of them will have to go back to gravel," he said. "They've been patched and patched, and it's gotten to the point that there's just nothing else we can do.
"Our Street Department supervisor, Jimmy Johnson, he's done a really good job with basically no money."
The street department's 2008 budget is $133,130. Holland said the tax can be projected to generate about $250,000.
Johnson said the current budget is enough to "just patch the streets, and that's about it; really it doesn't even cover the maintenance. We've been in the boat about 11 years and we haven't paved a street probably in 10 years without help from the county.
"If we could get this one-cent sales tax in we could make a big showing."
The downside to the tax increase, Holland said, is the same downside to any tax increase taxes go up. But Holland believes the benefit to the growing community's street and drainage infrastructure would be worth it.
"A lot of our streets are just finished; you can't patch them anymore and you've either got to take them totally out go back in with gravel or you can repave them and do them correctly the first time," Holland said. "The people are going to have to make a decision, whether they're going to correct this problem or not."
Early voting on this and other elections is ongoing at the Faulkner County Courthouse in Conway.
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
