Real and personal property tax rates the Garland County Quorum Court established for the 2017 tax year earlier this week include a 1.2-mill levy for the county General Fund for the fourth consecutive year.
The 1.2 General Fund mills the county began levying in the 2014 tax year replaced the millage it had been levying for the Road Fund, effectively depriving Hot Springs' Street Fund of about $350,000 a year. The state tax code requires cities and counties to split the proceeds from road taxes levied in incorporated areas.
The county transfers the proceeds from the 1.2 mills to its Road Fund. A $1.75 million transfer has been budgeted for next year, with a $1.5 million transfer budgeted for the current year.
District 4 City Director Larry Williams told a quorum committee earlier this year that the arrangement amounted to a "shell game" that diverts revenue from the city.
The Hot Springs Board of Directors earlier this year adopted a resolution sponsored by Williams that prevailed upon the county to reinstate the road millage. Justices of the peace tabled consideration of the resolution twice and have yet to introduce it for discussion.
The county said it initiated the millage shift in response to proposals the Arkansas Municipal League adopted at its 2013 and 2014 annual conventions that called for the entirety of road tax money collected within incorporated boundaries to be remitted to cities.
The proposal has yet to be acted on and wasn't introduced during the 2015 or 2017 legislative sessions of the General Assembly.
County officials have said the city's $7.3 million population-based share of the proceeds from the $54.6 million bond issue voters approved last year more than offsets the lost revenue from the road millage. The city allocated about $1 million from the share for its 2017 paving list, which overlaid more than 5 miles of city streets.
County officials have also said the three-eighths cent sales tax voters approved in 2011 to operate and maintain the Garland County Detention Center at 3564 Albert Pike Road has relieved the city of paying per diem costs for city inmates held at the detention center.
Per an interlocal agreement, the city remits three-eighths cent sales tax proceeds collected by incorporated-area businesses to the county, which in return doesn't charge the city per diem fees. According to the county's Detention Facility Operations Sales Tax Fund 2018 budget, collections of the three-eighths cent sales tax inside the city generate more than $2.3 million a year and contribute to the jail's $7 million annual budget.
The millage rates for the 2017 tax year are as follows:
• Garland County General Fund -- 1.2 mills.
• County Library Fund -- 1.6 mills.
• National Park College Fund -- 0.8 mills.
• Hot Springs General Fund -- 2.6 mills.
• Mountain Pine General Fund -- 5 mills.
• Lonsdale General Fund -- 1.6 mills.
• Jessieville School District -- 38.7 mills.
• Lake Hamilton School District -- 40.6 mills.
• Benton School District -- 41.9 mills.
• Magnet Cove School District -- 39.18 mills.
• Mount Ida School District -- 34 mills.
• Centerpoint School District -- 41 mills.
• Lakeside School District -- 37.7 mills.
• Cutter Morning Star School District -- 48.9 mills.
• Mountain Pine School District -- 39.9 mills.
• Hot Springs School District -- 42.1 mills.
• Fountain Lake School District -- 34.8 mills.
Local on 12/03/2017