Come November, if voters decide to approve a renewal of Springfield’s three-quarter-cent sales tax, the money would go toward public safety — the top priority in recent citywide surveys — along with place-making.
According to Springfield place-making czar Tim Rosenbury, key projects already underway include a new Springfield Branson National Airport terminal for private planes. It would serve as a community “front door” to serve up good first impressions for corporate travelers. Another example: the renovation of the Springfield Art Museum, seen as a symbol of "civic ambition."
But for the city, there’s a cost to doing nothing: The three-quarter-cent sales tax sunsets automatically on March 31, 2025, blowing a hole in Springfield’s budget.
"I think you can say the cost of doing nothing — drive three hours up the road and look at St. Louis.”
That’s Tom Prater, co-chair of Springfield’s new Citizens Commission on Community Investment.
The cost of doing nothing came up repeatedly at the Commission’s Tuesday meeting, its first. In this instance, Prater was warning his fellow commission members about what’s at stake in their sales tax deliberations by referencing Missouri’s largest metro. St. Louis was the subject of a scathing business article recently published by the Wall Street Journal.
Springfield doesn’t want that kind of attention. Thus, city leaders are looking at how they should spend the sales tax — along with many other efforts they’re undertaking to ensure Springfield is a place where people want to actually live.
Since voters passed it back in 2009, the three-quarter-cent sales tax has brought in roughly $45 million dollars per year. If that money vanishes, Springfield’s general fund would lose somewhere between $5.6 million and $8.6 million dollars per year.
Here’s city finance director David Holtmann explaining potential consequences of letting the tax expire: “So we’re looking at 6 to 8 percent that we would have to cut off the top.”
Let that sink in: Regardless of any spending recommendations the Citizens Commission could make in the next few months, if Springfield voters don’t renew the sales tax at the ballot box later this year, city officials say cuts to city jobs and reductions in city services would almost certainly follow. They'd be an echo of similar deep cuts that took place during the Great Recession.
Here’s Holtmann again:“We don’t have, we don’t have, we don’t have that much in operating supplies anywhere. These would be, these would be people and services we provide.”
The three-quarter-cent sales tax the Citizens Commission is considering already makes up part of the 8.1 percent sales tax that shoppers pay inside Springfield city limits — a rate that happens to be lower than sales taxes in Joplin, Ozark and Republic.
Meanwhile, the old police-fire pension continues to require funding, even though it’s 90-percent paid for. Recently hired police officers and firefighters now get their pensions through a statewide fund for local government employees, LAGERS. But roughly 97 members of the old pension fund remain alive — and the city must pay 100-percent of the costs it’s promised, as part of its obligation to police and fire department retirees and their families.
More information on the Citizens Commission on Community Investment is available at springfieldmo.gov/ccci.
