Geneva aldermen decided Monday night to shelve the idea of meeting with business leaders about a possible downtown sales tax.
After that idea failed 8-2, the notion of a downtown business district – and its associated sales tax that could have funded improvements such as public restrooms, an entertainment pavilion and additional parking – is also dead, said Mayor Kevin Burns.
“We’re wasting our time,” Burns said. “Let’s kill it.”
Most of Monday night’s meeting was spent wrestling with whether the council should host a meeting with downtown business leaders to pitch the idea. A gathering last year with business owners was cut short because of their strong opposition.
The issue has been on the council’s radar since 2011. Consultants did preliminary work about whether downtown Geneva could qualify to create the “business district” under state law, which would allow the council to raise taxes for improvements. A city-wide sales tax could only come through a referendum measure and proceeds would have to be spent on infrastructure needs.
City staff recently approached aldermen on the idea again, saying that before more was spent to update the proposal, they should decide whether they would be willing to raise the sales tax downtown.
With a business district, the city could legally raise a sales tax up to 1 percent, although the proposal had been to raise it a quarter of a percent. Geneva has a lower sales tax than its neighbors and raising it downtown would have hit out-of-towners more than residents since estimates show that about 78 percent of shoppers downtown come from elsewhere.
But Scott Lebin, chair of the board of directors for the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, said the opposition stems mostly from the idea that downtown taxes would be higher than in the rest of the city, placing downtown businesses in competition with their counterparts on Randall Road.
“We like all these things,” Lebin said, referring to the list of possible improvements, which also included more connections over the river for pedestrians and cycling and improving signage. “But when it’s a tax just on the downtown, that’s where the issue is.”
Shoppers may not mind a quarter percent increase on smaller items, he said, but it may give someone pause when buying a $25,000 ring or reserving a large special event at the Herrington Inn.
Aldermen Craig Maladra and Tara Burghart voted in favor of hosting the meeting.
