FERNDALE - Given a third chance at getting a request for a sales tax increase on the February ballot, most Ferndale City Council members decided it was prudent after all to ask for a public vote within the next seven weeks rather than in November 2012.
What's undecided is how the city and the Ferndale School District will proceed with simultaneous campaigns for tax measures.
Meeting as the Transportation Benefit District board, City Council members voted 5-2 on Wednesday, Dec. 28. to put a 0.2 percent sales tax increase on the Feb. 14 ballot. Voting against the February ballot were Steve Malpezzi and Keith Olson.
Already on that ballot is a four-year levy request from the Ferndale School District.
The decision Wednesday reversed a vote taken by the same board Dec. 5 to have the sales tax measure on the November 2012 ballot. The board initially revisited that decision on Dec. 19, but that meeting adjourned before a vote could be taken on whether to move the election to February.
The sales tax measure, if voters approve, will add an estimated $300,000 a year to Ferndale's revenue stream, to go toward road fixes. More than 20 percent of the city's lane-miles are in such poor condition, Public Works Director Janice Marlega said, that those roads need to be replaced.
The sales tax increase requires a simple majority to pass. Moving the vote to February would make enough funds available for roadwork to begin in 2013, Marlega said. Getting the sales tax increase in November would have delayed significant work until 2014.
One of the first projects would be a $900,000 reconstruction of Thornton Street at Skyline Elementary School. The city's complete list of needed road repairs would cost at least $16 million, Marlega said.
School officials had expressed their disapproval of the city joining the school district on the February ballot. School board President Lee Anne Riddle reached out to council members the week before the Dec. 28 vote.
"I believe that running a tax measure on the ballot in February with our school levy is not helpful to either of us," Riddle said in a Dec. 23 email to the mayor and the council.
The school board president called on the city and the school district to work together if they were to be on the same ballot.
"We will both be more effective if we support each other through the process," Riddle wrote.
So far, communication has been lacking between the city and the schools, council and transportation board member Lloyd Zimmerman said.
"The best we can do now as individual council people is get on board, really work double, triple hard for the schools," Zimmerman said. "If (the school levy) fails, I think we can only point at ourselves because they said, 'Don't rock the boat.'"
