2008-09-05 - Laserfiche WebLink

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St. Louis County will place a use tax initiative on the November ballot. This will establish a rate on goods described above coming into the State. The use tax WILL NOT increase the sales tax rates for regular retail shoppers. Estimates on the use tax indicate it would generate $30 million countywide. Half of the funds would go directly to the County for public safety, primarily a new communications system. New towers, base stations, and handheld and vehicle radios are estimated to cost $80 million. Currently, first responders do not have the ability to talk with each other across municipal and disciplinary lines. The new system would eliminate the overlap in signals that currently cause interference, enhance radio spectrum, and bring us into compliance with FCC radio requirements issued after incidents like 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina. The other half of the funds would go to cities who share in the countywide sales tax pool, lower point-of-sale cities and the County for general revenue. This was part of the revenue sharing plan that all the cities negotiated with the county in the mid-90’s. If University City would receive $752,880at the County’s current rate of approved, 1.85 %. This would be in addition to the current use tax received by the City on sales of goods described above within University City, which currently generates approximately $420,000 per year. Again, this would not be a change to the current sales tax rate on retail sales in the City. Correspondence from the County League is attached. I forwarded brief emails to each of our County Council representatives asking that they not support a sunset clause to the use tax proposal. News Boxes You may recall that lawyers for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and USA Today protested the Council’s enactment of Ordinance No. 6722 regulating news boxes, claiming that the ordinance contained several constitutional flaws. Because of the complaints, we suspended enforcement of the ordinance pending a meeting with the newspapers’ lawyers. The attached redlined ordinance is a result of those meetings. While the newspapers’ constitutional criticisms were greatly overstated, staff became convinced of the need to clarify the ordinance to avoid unintended misinterpretations. To ensure that the process and regulatory provisions could be understood and followed by all in the spirit of the original ordinance, we are recommending the attached revision. It clarifies both the fee structure, ensuring that fees are intended as partial recoupment for costs rather than as a revenue generator (for purposes of both the Hancock Amendment and the First Amendment), and the process for approving and denying news box and accompanying right-of-way permits. While the Post Dispatch and USA Today still express misgivings about the proposed revision, we have been advised that these claims lack legal merit of any kind. One issue that is of significant importance to the two newspapers is the colors of their existing and future boxes. The ordinance originally required neutral colors, to avoid extreme coloring and to establish some uniform news box appearances on city streets. But the newspapers complained that this would decrease their visibility in an already tight market, weaken their branding and trademarks, and lead to significant costs of repainting ($300/box) or buying new boxes (about $450 each). The newspapers argued that the requirement would likely lead the companies to remove news boxes from less profitable locations rather than incur the costs of compliance.