County Mayor Jim Coppinger and the nine members of the County Commission keep suggesting that Chattanooga’s city government is somehow shirking its financial obligations to a range of civic agencies because the city has decided to let the sales tax agreement lapse when it expires on May 23. The way county officials tell it, they will have to let funding for these agencies lapse because the city is taking away their funding source.
In truth, city residents and businesses have been paying twice to support the civic agencies involved – or about 80 percent of the bill overall. They’ve done so in a lot of other city-county cost-sharing arrangements as well. They’ve been paying once through their donated sales tax revenue, and again through their county property taxes.
City still pays fair share
Even with the lapse of the sales tax agreement, they will still be paying the lion’s share – 58 percent – of any support that is ultimately continued for these agencies through the common county property tax that every other county resident and business pays.
They will also use more than half of the $10.5 million from the expiring sales tax agreement to continue fully funding the Regional Planning Agency and most of the city-county library’s budget. County government has pretended to pay a portion of these costs by handing back to them some $5 million from the city’s contributed sales tax fund.