Half-cent law enforcement tax to be on November ballot

Ozark County commissioners on Monday voted to put a half-cent sales tax for law enforcement on the Nov.8 General Election  ballot.

Presiding Commissioner John Turner, in making the motion to put the issue before voters, said “In my eight years in office I’ve never asked for a new tax, but I propose we put a half-cent tax on the November ballot and let the people decide if they want to fund law enforcement in Ozark County or not.”

Commissioners Layne Nance and Gary Collins both voted in favor of the proposal.

Sheriff Cass Martin was in attendance at Monday’s meeting of the commissioners and said the tax is “desperately needed.”

“We certainly need it,” the sheriff said. “I don’t know how we will continue to operate at the level we need to without it.”

Martin, in recent weeks, has made tough decisions to stay on budget, including laying off seven employees and cutting back patrols. The sheriff said unforeseen circumstances such as soaring fuel costs and record inflation has led to the department’s current budget crisis.

Currently there is a half cent sales tax collected that funds law enforcement in Ozark County. “It’s totally inadequate and it always has been,” said County Clerk Brian Wise. 

Wise said a half cent sales tax generates a little more than $400,000 a year, and that the sheriff’s department budget usually runs around the million-dollar mark.

The sheriff’s department does not receive any money from property taxes, and the only other revenue source for the sheriff’s department is prisoner reimbursement from the state, which has been $22 per day per prisoner for nearly a decade.

Even that money, Turner said, is sporadic. “The state pays when they want and often they don’t pay … we can’t count on it,” Turner said.

Martin said he is doing “everything in my power to cut costs while still providing good law enforcement” for Ozark County.

At the beginning of the year Martin announced that, in order to save money, he would personally cut the grass at the jail and service the department’s patrol vehicles.

“We have our deputies wearing several different hats now,” Martin said. “They’re running around doing everyone’s job.”

Martin had previously said his department was also looking into grants to fund a project to transition the jail to solar power to cut utility costs.

Last month the sheriff posted on social media that his department would be cutting patrols and minor and non-violent crimes would have to be handled over the phone or residents would have to come into the sheriff’s office to file a report.

Martin, who is in his first term as sheriff, said there was no way to see the budget crisis coming. “There’s no way I could have seen this coming when I ran for sheriff,” Martin said, who won the sheriff’s race in November of 2020 and took office in January 2021.

Officials said previous sheriff’s had additional revenue sources by housing county inmates from other area counties which have since built new jails. 

Martin told commissioners Monday that his department’s payroll alone adds up to about $60,000 per month.

Current tax breakdown

Ozark County collects local sales tax, broken down as follows: 1 cent (per dollar spent) to general revenue, half a cent to road and bridge (split between east and west), half a cent to law enforcement and half a cent to Ozark County Ambulance (which operates autonomously outside the county budget); for a total of 2.5 cents per dollar. If the sales tax for law enforcement were to be approved by voters, that would give that department 1 full cent per dollar spent (which by law is the maximum amount for a sales tax for any one particular fund) for a total local sales tax of 3 cents.

Currently, Wise said, Ozark County has a lower minimum sales tax rate than 81 percent of Missouri counties.

Wise said sales tax collection has been sort of a wild roller coaster ride this year, with strong sales early on and then a few months of flat revenues. He said July collections have rebounded nicely, but overall sales tax collections were still not impressive for the year with only about a 3.5 percent increase. 

Wise said it’s impossible to compare Ozark County to its neighboring counties, because our neighbors all have much larger towns and probably several dozens more local businesses collecting tax that bolsters the sales tax collection.