Naperville sales tax garners supports

The majority of Naperville city councilmen expressed initial support Tuesday for creating a sales tax.

However, each has stipulations attached to doing so and a final decision is months out.

The discussion was one of several workshops to shore up a $14.1 million budget hole.

Monday, city staff recommended creating a sales tax, lowering the downtown food and beverage tax and keeping the property tax rate flat.

Tuesday, councilmen each presented their own recipes for raising and lowering taxes.

"The way I look at this is it's sort of like a primordial soup where all these factors are all over the place and we're ... trying to coalesce things," Councilman Robert Fieseler said.

Councilmen Jim Boyajian, Grant Wehrli, Kenn Miller, Robert Fieseler, Paul Hinterlong and Judy Brodhead all presented scenarios that include creating a sales tax of at least 0.25 percent, which would generate $4 million.

Miller said he would support a 0.5 percent sales tax.

"It's not only this year we have a problem, it's next year when our property tax (base) is going to go down 5 percent," he said. "So we're going to be back here next year and 0.25 percent may not do it."

Mayor George Pradel was absent. Richard Furstenau and Doug Krause were both against creating a sales tax.

"I think we have to be realistic here and say that we need to be looking at raising the property taxes," Krause said. "It's tax deductible ... but the sales tax is not, it's regressive."

However, most on the council say they want to keep property tax rate next year flat at 71.67 cents per $100 of equalized assessed value.

All eight of the councilmen present expressed support for a gasoline tax of at least 1 cent on top of the current 2 cents.

Residents may get some relief from the proposed tax increases though. Creating a sales tax would automatically lower the downtown food and beverage tax that funds parking projects. Councilmen may also lower the citywide food and beverage tax that funds cultural grants.

Increasing revenue isn't likely to be enough to fill the budget gap. City staff will spend about six weeks putting together scenarios that show what city services could be on the chopping block depending how much of a hole is left after the tax increases.

Councilmen are still debating how much of the burden to share with Naper Settlement and the library system.

The city's $14.1 million hole includes a $5 million shortage in general fund revenue, a $1 million cushion, $6.6 million shortage for road maintenance and $1.5 million to cover the proposed elimination of the roadway impact fee.