This is not a new tax.
It extends the street maintenance and improvement program voters approved in 2015. Funding comes from a two-tenths of 1% (0.2%) addition to the local sales and use tax to be collected for a term of 10 years. Centralia’s sales tax would not go up if the Transportation Benefit District is renewed in the upcoming election.
In actual dollars and cents, this adds one cent to a $5 purchase. Remember, you drove on city streets to get there, so just as you pay to maintain the car you use to drive to the place you spent that $5, think of this as a small street maintenance fee so you can drive there. The money you spent on gas alone to drive somewhere to spend that $5 cost more than this small fee.
These funds can only be used for maintaining and improving Centralia streets: road maintenance, construction and safety improvements. Almost $8 million ($7,921,748) has been raised by this tax over the last nine years. Sixty percent has gone toward operation and maintenance of Centralia streets ($4,753,049). Forty percent ($3,168,699) was used as local matching funds for federal and state transportation dollars that rebuild existing failing infrastructure or new road improvements.
This is a sales tax, not a property tax. Everyone who shops in Centralia, residents and visitors alike, help pay for maintenance and improvements to the Centralia streets they are driving on. If you shop in Chehalis, you pay this tax to fund Chehalis street projects.
If the Transportation Benefit District is not renewed, street maintenance and improvements will compete with the Centralia police, parks and general government for limited city general fund dollars. Grant matching dollars will have to come from some unknown source. If no matching funds are available Centralia will not be eligible for federal and state transportation funds.
This all means reduced street maintenance and long delays in building major transportation improvement projects in Centralia.
Kahle Jennings
Centralia
