Overland Park is now set to hold a special mail-in election this June asking voters to approve a dedicated sales tax that would go towards improving aspects of the city’s aging infrastructure.
Notably, city officials say funds raised by the tax would also allow the city to reduce its reliance on chip seal, the controversial road resurfacing method.
The Overland Park City Council Monday night unanimously approved putting the proposed 3/8-cent special sales tax up for a vote.
If approved, the new tax would be an increase from the city’s current 1/8-cent sales tax, which is set to expire in March 2024.
The city expects the tax to raise $16.5M
- That increased funding would go towards funding city street improvements and a traffic management program for repairing and replacing traffic signals.
- With the extra funding, the city would also be able to use higher-grade road resurfacing methods on some roads, thereby reducing the need for chip seal, which the city has acknowledged in the past has issues but is cheaper than other methods.
- Overall, city officials project that the additional revenue from the tax would help reduce up to 41% of the city’s chip seal use over the next 20 years.
Chip seal has been an ongoing issue
- Residents have voiced long-standing concerns about chip seal, arguing that the finely crushed rock used as a top-layer surface often gets tracked around residential streets and can prove hazardous to children and cyclists.
- At Monday night’s city council meeting, resident Justin Rosenberg said he did not mind chip seal when it was first done to his neighborhood streets seven years ago, but it has since become an issue after his roads were redone this past October.
- “It was bad,” Rosenberg said. “October is too late to do chip seal, so the rocks didn’t settle in the tar.”
Some councilmembers wanted a higher 1/2-cent tax
- Councilmember Jeff Cox argued adding an additional 1/8 of a cent to the already proposed 3/8-cent tax would help reduce the city’s chip seal use even faster.
- Cox said he had concerns that residents would not be willing to vote in favor of the special sales tax increase if the city’s reduction rate on chip seal would only be 41% over the next two decades.
- However, Overland Park City Manager Lori Curtis Luther noted increasing the special sales tax to 4/8, or 1/2 of a cent, would still not totally eliminate the city’s reliance on chip seal.
The 3/8-cent proposal passed unanimously
- Though the council was divided between 3/8- and 1/2-cent, as a whole they agreed the special sales tax dedicated to infrastructure needed to be raised in order to maintain city roads.
- “I don’t understand why magically a 1/2-cent sales tax is going to make everybody feel better and vote for it,” Councilmember Paul Lyons said. “At best, it’s going to maybe eliminate another 9% of chip seal, which means that chip seal is still going to be used prevalently around the community.”
- An Overland Park infrastructure advisory group, which was the first to propose increasing the sales tax as a means to fund road improvements, found if the city did not increase its funding for infrastructure, then city roads would be “beyond [their] useful life” by 2040.
Residents will vote on the issue in June
- Tuesday, May 23, is the deadline for residents to register to vote in order to automatically receive mail-in ballots.
- If voters ultimately approve a sales tax increase, it would go into effect starting April 1, 2024.
Go deeper: Overland Park infrastructure group says sales tax increase could reduce chip seal work
