Fulton County officials are researching a way to generate additional revenue for a new jail that would remove Rochester, Akron, Kewanna and Fulton from the discussion.
The Fulton County Council enacted two new income taxes this month. It also is considering raising the local option income tax for public safety, or LOIT, to gain more money for the project.
The governing bodies of the city and towns previously were asked to consider dedicating their share of a public safety tax rate hike toward the project. However, county officials recently learned there’s another way to collect such revenue that bypasses negotiations with the other taxing entities.
Fulton County Auditor Christina Sriver explained the workaround to the county council Wednesday. An Indiana Department of Local Government Finance field representative told her about it recently.
She said the council could opt to allocate any portion of pubic safety tax revenues – existing and future – to a public safety answering point, or PSAP, expenditure.Those funds would go toward funding 911 dispatch,freeing up money in the county general fund for the jail.
It’s essentially a shuffling of funds and requires no approval from the city or towns.
A public safety LOIT increase from the current rate of 0.25 of 1 percent to 0.55 of 1 percent has been considered. If the city and towns were to dedicate their shares a lesser rate hike of 0.20 of 1 percent was being proposed.
The county could leave the current public safety LOIT distributions the same, approve the rate hike it deems necessary and take the resulting revenue off the top for the PSAP.
“You can still get the same amount of money. It’s just a little bit of a longer way to go about it,” Sriver told the council.
Councilman Jim Widman clarified that the only way for the county to generate new money for the jail project would be to impose the rate hike or take from thecurrent public safety distributions received by the city and towns. The council did not express any interest in taking those distributions, adding their consideration on the matter is still in the fact-finding stage. Sriver noted there are 12 counties in the state that have allocated a portion of their public safety income tax to PSAP.
“I will call around to these counties and find out what their conversations were and how well it was received by the city and towns,” she said. “At this point, it doesn’t matter what we do, it’s not going to go in until 2020 anyway.”
Councilman Randy Sutton said he’s not opposed to waiting on the tax measure until the council has more details on the new jail.
“We’re not in a rush to generate this specifically yet until we get all of our ducks in a row and find out exactly what we need,” he said.
He believes the council should create a cash buffer between what’s collected and what’s needed for annual bond payments on the project. His reasoning was based on the additional operating costs for the new facility and proposed state legislation that could result in income taxes staying in the county where people work, not where they live.
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