The City of Moberly hopes residents will renew their transportation sales tax during its municipal election. The half-cent sales tax has been in place since 1986 and provides funding to the city’s Transportation Trust.
The Transportation Trust funds the maintenance of streets and sidewalks. Programs like the Moberly Sidewalk Repair program supplements two thirds the cost of sidewalk repair for homeowners.
Scott McGarvey is the city’s community relations manager. He said the more than $1.5 million in additional annual revenue last year funded several important projects, including widening a section of South Morley Street.
“It needs a center turn lane,” McGarvey said. "We're able to partner with MoDOT using funding that we have from the Transportation Trust to do a 50/50 match that's giving us the ability to do a project that, under our own ability, we would not have had any chance of making possible.”
The trust has allowed Moberly to remain competitive for federal and state grants that require the city to match funds.
“We use portions of this Transportation Trust funding every year to compete and bring in federal and state tax dollars to supply projects that we wouldn't normally be able to do,” he said.
One of those projects included repairing the storm drains around the Big Rocks Manufacturing facility to prevent standing surface water from covering their entrance. Stanley Hulett, the company’s CFO, said the tax benefits the streets used by both residents and non-residents.
“I really look at that as a good thing that the city residents can have an influence over how much revenue is raised,” Hulett said.
Hulett said renewing the half-cent sales tax also ensures that the money spent in Moberly has widespread impact.
“People travel from maybe a 50-mile radius of Moberly to come here and shop,” Hulett said. “When they are spending their money in Moberly, they're generating tax revenue for this trust.”
Tom Sanders, the Moberly Public Works Director, said the funds are necessary to maintain the work already done to improve the city’s streets and sidewalks.
“It would diminish greatly in the matter of a few years if we did not have that funding source,” Sanders said.
Sanders said future projects include adding a center turn lane to Burkhart and Carpenter streets, replacing sidewalks and adding a trail system to link the downtown areas.
McGarvey said residents should keep in mind the renewal would not increase local sales tax, but rather, keep it the same.
