Refining ideas
Ontario City Council set to review revenue committee suggestions

by Katie Pizza
Argus Observer
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 10:33 AM PDT

Debbie Ray, a waitress at Matsy’s Restaurant, wipes down glasses from the dishwasher Monday afternoon. Matsy’s, situated at 1241 S.W. Fourth Ave., and other restaurants in Ontario could be faced with a 3 percent prepared food and beverage tax — expected to bring in $578,000 annually — if the Ontario City Council chooses that idea generated by the revenue committee. Another idea the committee sent to the City Council is a tax for employees who work in Ontario but reside outside the city limits. Although Ray is an Ontario resident, at least one co-worker is not. Committee members will be meeting with the council next week to present its recommendations.

Ontario — The Ontario City Council will hear a presentation from the city revenue committee regarding a number of money-generating ideas at its meeting Monday.

The committee, formed last spring and consisting of Ontario residents and officials, met approximately five times between April 9 and June 11 to develop revenue-generating ideas for the city.

Revenue-generating concepts the committee developed included: a 1 percent sales tax ($3.315 million), a parking lot space tax ($400,000), a 1 percent increase on the transient occupancy tax ($35,000), a 3 percent prepared food and beverage tax ($578,000), a $100-a-year city business license ($75,000), a property tax levy ($852,227), an accident response charge ($20,000), a gross-receipt tax ($1,750,000), a $100-a-year renter tax ($400,000), a 1 percent gas tax ($72,000), a local income tax, a square-foot tax on retail space ($300,000), a tax for employees who work in Ontario but reside elsewhere and a redistribution of 9-1-1 fees.

Some of the ideas, however, did not have a final figure attached to them because the revenue committee could not determine the total amount of income within the city and a lack of 9-1-1 service total costs.

“Personally, I think they are all good ideas,” committee member Gary Halcom said.

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Halcom said it was very important the revenue committee explored all the ideas to see how much revenue each could generate for the city and what the risks were.

Ontario City Councilman Dan Cummings said he expects the council to hold special work sessions regarding the ideas presented to the elected board.

“So we can deal specially with these issues,” he said. “We’ll go through each of the items.”

Ontario Mayor Joe Dominick said the business license tax was informally discussed in the past, but business owners voiced opposition to the licenses because the money was not specifically targeted toward a certain issue.

The discussions, he said, involved the potential income going to the general fund. Dominick said Pendleton enacted such a licensing fee, which went toward downtown development, garnered the support of the area’s merchants.

Dominick also spoke about the proposed 1 percent gas tax, which he said the city had the power to enact without voter support because it would replace street repair money no longer provided through the state.

Dominick, who heard about the gas tax at the Oregon Mayor’s Conference last month, said that proposed levy would be directly targeted.

“The fuel tax would be specifically for street repair,” Dominick said Monday. “The state has taken away almost all of our money for street repair.”

The revenue committee originally presented its ideas to the council at its regular meeting July 7. However, at the time, the committee could not offer a booklet detailing meeting minutes and the process used to decide which one of the ideas was the most viable. The system the committee used assigned a number to various aspects of a concept, such as money gained from the idea, cost to implement it, impact to businesses and impact to citizens.

The impact to citizens and businesses, as well as the cost to implement a revenue idea, secured a negative number, with the amount of money gained in the proposal given a positive number.

The negative numbers were then subtracted from the positive number in order to better decide if the benefits of the idea outweighed the negative impacts.

Of the 14 proposed ideas, a sales tax was the only idea with a final positive number.

Council members were recently presented with a 115-page document, which also includes an overview of Ontario’s budget and population statistics. The booklet also contains grant possibilities and suggestions for hiring practices, such as inmate work crews, that could help the city save money.  Revenue committee chairman and the executive director of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce Visitors and Convention Bureau, John Breidenbach, said he hopes committee members will be able to attend the council work session Thursday and then present their recommendations at the council’s meeting Monday. After that, Breidenbach said he hopes the budget committee will able to review the ideas.