Scott County commissioners are under heavy fire from both directions as they begin to publicly ponder whether to impose a half-cent sales tax for transportation.
"Our ruling class ... never appear to be hurting," Alexandra Matyja of Prior Lake told a public hearing last week. "Instead, they keep coming up with creative and never-ending ideas for taking away more of our money and spending it on their pet projects, just because they can."
"Good roads allow businesses to flourish," said Robert Wagner, of Blakeley Township. "We are fiscally conservative and not fans of grandiose government projects, but roads are for the common good."
Those sentiments — both of them — are common, Board Chairman Tom Wolf said. His constituent surveys show that the top two concerns are, first, to keep taxes down, and second, to keep roads up.
"That's our dilemma," Wolf said.
A recent session on the issue featured a strong showing of both elected officials and business leaders and owners supporting the idea of a tax. That included businesses whose customers could pay stiff sales taxes for large items such as cars and furniture.
"We're a pretty conservative group," said Tom Frazier, of Shakopee Chevrolet, speaking for the Shakopee Chamber of Commerce. "There was a lot of back-and-forth about it. But we feel this is the best option, keeping the money under local control. It's very important to have a vibrant road system."
Much of the support seemed based in part on the suspicion that if Scott County doesn't adopt its own tax, it will get shoved into a regionwide sales tax that would siphon off the vast majority of proceeds to other counties.
