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posted by martyb on Saturday August 29 2015, @05:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-vote-can-make-a-difference dept.

According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, some businesses in Columbia, Missouri, wanted to create a Community Improvement District (CID) and pay for improvements by a sales tax increase within the CID's borders.

The Columbia City Council established the district on a 5-2 vote in April in response to a petition from a group of property owners in the CID boundaries. The “qualified voters” in a CID are capable of levying various taxes or assessments within the boundaries of the district to fund improvement projects. Under state law, decisions to impose sales taxes in a CID are to be made by registered voters living in the district boundaries. If no such registered voters are present, property owners vote.

The property owners drew the district to exclude registered voters so they could impose a sales tax and avoid additional property taxes. In their efforts, they overlooked a single graduate student who lives in the district, Jen Henderson. Now, she alone gets to decide the fate of the sales tax increase.

The CID Executive Director Carrie Gartner, who says the district is not viable without the sales tax increase, has approached Henderson.

[More after the break.]

Henderson said she doesn’t want her involvement with the CID to be private. She said Gartner initially approached her in June to explain the goals of the CID and ask her to consider “unregistering her vote” so the property owners could make the decision. The more she researched the situation, Henderson said, things “just didn’t seem to be as good as they were saying to me at first.”

Gartner “tried to get me to unregister, and that’s pretty manipulative,” Henderson said. “The district plan and the district border is manipulative, too.”

Henderson says she doesn't know how she will vote, but she has concerns about

...vague project outlines, Gartner’s pay [$70,000/year], Business Loop improvements she said will help businesses but not nearby residents and how an additional sales tax would affect low-income people purchasing groceries and other necessities

Gartner says the CID is already in debt for about $215,000. If the vote isn't held, or goes against the CID, the property owners will have to rely on the property taxes they had hoped to avoid.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Fnord666 on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:01PM

    by Fnord666 (652) on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:01PM (#229493) Homepage
    The council deliberately planned the district out so that it excluded residents in order to keep their opinion out of a decision that will directly impact them. Too bad they missed one. Now I guess that person gets to be the "representative" for all the residents. Karma can be quite a bitch sometimes.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:10PM (#229496)

    Now I guess that person gets to be the "representative" for all the residents.

    The part you missed is that she is the only resident. There are no other residents, so she is the "representative" for herself. There is no karma payback going on here.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by eof on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:16PM

      by eof (5559) on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:16PM (#229499)

      She represents all the people who will have to pay the sales tax in the district. There would be no point to the businesses if there weren't any patrons.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday August 29 2015, @07:13PM

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday August 29 2015, @07:13PM (#229514) Journal

        And she nneed to vote it down, regardless of the economics involved just tt bitch slap the underhanded way they tried to manipulate the political pricess.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @09:54PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @09:54PM (#229576)

          Down? Why not fully embrace the idea of higher sales taxes to pay for local improvements that benefit all the local residents? ;)

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:07AM

            by sjames (2882) on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:07AM (#229655) Journal

            Perhaps it doesn't benefit the surrounding residents. Certainly them going to the trouble of trying (and failing) to exclude any residents from the vote suggests that the property owners themselves don't believe there is a visible benefit to the residents.

            General rule of thumb, when a group of people try to get a particular vote through political and/or procedural trickery, there's probably a good reason to vote the other way.