Steuben County Steuben passes wheel tax

The council will next have to publicize and hold a public hearing on its proposed LOHUT ordinance and approve it three times — during which time the proposed ordinance may be amended before final approval.

“Unless somebody’s got a rabbit in their hat and can tell me something else (is available for road funding) this is the only tool available to us,” Council President Rick Shipe said.

“I think it would be quite irresponsible of us not to pursue this and get public input,” Councilwoman Ruth Beer said.

“We need to proceed or forget it,” Shipe said.

Councilwoman Linda Hansen said as long as Major Moves money was available for roads, she would never have voted for LOHUT.

“That being said, we’ve reached the end of that funding,” she said.

Major Moves was money distributed to counties from the proceeds of the lease of the Indiana Toll Road to a private company in 2006. As a toll road county, Steuben received $33 million. The county has about $2.3 million in uncommitted funds in Major Moves with about $2.5 million outstanding in loans.

There are two parts to LOHUT, the wheel tax (charged of larger vehicles) and the motor vehicle excise surtax (mostly passenger vehicles, motorcycles and the like). A county can’t pass one without the other.

The most the county could charge under the wheel tax would be $80 per vehicle, which is what was approved. And under the excise surtax, $50 is the maximum, which also was approved.

A variety of steps must be taken by the council before July 1 for the tax to go into effect in 2018. It is expected the council will act on first reading of the LOHUT ordinance in its April meeting. That will be followed by a public hearing and second reading of the ordinance, possibly in May. The final reading of the ordinance could come in June.

If the tax is approved by July 1, officials don’t expect to see enough collection to have much of an impact during the 2018 road maintenance season. The tax is collected when people pay their vehicle registrations, which is spread out over the course of the year.