Duluth mayor among those tapping brakes on sales tax proposal for St. Louis County

Duluth's mayor and other public officials are trying to tap the brakes on a County Board vote for a new sales tax for road repair in St. Louis County.

Mayor Don Ness spoke before the board Tuesday after writing on his Facebook page that a proposed half-percent tax would disproportionately draw from Duluth and Hermantown, which have the lion's share of retailers but only a small portion of the county's roads.

The public hearing was one of two originally scheduled before a possible County Board vote by the end of the year — a timeline that Ness argued was happening too swiftly.

The tax, on most everything, except food and clothing and vehicles, would bring the county an estimated $10.5 million a year, according to a letter to the board from the county administrator and public works director. About 30 percent of the 1,500 miles of paved road in the county are in "very poor to poor condition," the letter said. In addition, many of the county's 600 bridges are reaching the end of their design life.

Commissioner Keith Nelson said after the meeting that he believes there's support for the tax on the board. He said it's a safety issue that has been on the horizon for the past two years.

"The last thing I want to do is raise taxes," Nelson said. "But it takes resources to repair infrastructure, and the state and the federal government have been treating roads and bridges woefully inadequately for the past 15, 20 years and we're getting to a level up here with 3,000 miles of roads where we have to start addressing 1938-era bridges."

Projects would be prioritized based on safety and need of repair as determined by scientific data, he said.

Ness wrote that about $6 million of the annual tax would be generated from Duluth businesses, with businesses in Hermantown contributing another $1 million. "Interestingly, Duluth has less than 1.5% of the county's roads and Hermantown has about 2%," he wrote. "So, 65% of the revenue for the program would be raised in these two cities, but less than 4% of the streets supported are in those same cities."

He said in an interview after the hearing that the county maintains only about 10 percent of the roads in the city of Duluth, leaving city taxpayers responsible for 90 percent. In Hermantown, the county owns about 50 percent of the roads, Ness said.

Hermantown Mayor Wayne Boucher said he understands the county is in dire need of money to fix roads and that those roads bring people to shop in his city. But the city needs road repair money, too, he said, adding that the city has to handle the traffic and enforcement.

"I'm concerned about what appears to be the suddenness of [the tax], and I'm concerned with the equity in the way it'll be distributed," he said.

Commissioner Nelson, whose district is mostly rural, said roads in the cities are more expensive to maintain than rural roads. People from all over the county spend money shopping in Duluth, he pointed out.

The Legislature gave counties the ability to implement a local option sales tax for transportation funding in 2013. So far, six counties have passed the sales tax: Wadena, Olmsted, Rice, Douglas, Becker and Beltrami, according to the Association of Minnesota Counties.

County Commissioner Chris Dahlberg, whose district lies within the city of Duluth, said he's concerned a higher tax there would drive shoppers to Wisconsin.

He said there may be other places in the budget and tax matrix where the county could find money for road and bridge repair, too.

Besides a previously scheduled hearing next Tuesday at the regular County Board meeting in Hibbing, officials scheduled a third public hearing on the evening of Dec. 1 in Hermantown. The soonest the board could vote would be at its Dec. 2 meeting in Duluth.