Pierce County city boosts its sales tax by 0.1%. Here’s what it will pay for
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- Ruston City Council unanimously approved a 0.1% sales tax to fund public safety programs.
- Tax will raise about $50,000/yr and enable a $125,000 public safety grant application.
- Revenue restricted to criminal justice purposes, including diversion and outreach.
The Ruston City Council has followed the cities of Tacoma and Lakewood to pass a new 0.1% sales-and-use tax to fund public safety. The Tuesday vote was unanimous, city clerk Mario Ortega confirmed.
The tax amounts to 10 cents for every $100 spent, with groceries, medicine and certain medical supplies and hygiene products exempt. Pierce County also passed a 0.1% sales-and-use tax for public safety earlier this month, and revenue is not shared among jurisdictions.
Ruston is expected to raise about $50,000 a year from the tax and will be eligible to apply for a $125,000 public-safety grant, per city records. The tax would start being collected July 1.
Revenue must be spent on “criminal justice purposes,” which includes, “domestic violence services, staffing adequate public defense counsel, diversion programs, reentry work for incarcerated individuals, programs that have a reasonable relationship to reducing the numbers of people interacting with the criminal justice system, programs improving behavioral health, reducing incidents of homelessness, community placements for juvenile offenders and community outreach and assistance programs,” according to the ordinance.
The News Tribune left a message with Police Chief Nestor Bautista on Wednesday. Other council members, including Mayor Bruce Hopkins, could not be reached for comment. Council member Lynn Syler referred The News Tribune to the meeting minutes for her comments, which have not been published as of Wednesday.
Council member Naomi Wilson told The News Tribune that the tax is important because it will help the city fund more crime-prevention and diversion programs and will help Ruston leverage additional grants.
At a council meeting on March 3, Bautista told staff that one potential use of grant funding would be to hire an additional police officer, noting that he anticipated there would be two to three vacancies within the next nine months, per the meeting minutes. Another potential use could be hiring a civilian staff member to do community outreach, among other duties.
Bautista said the Ruston Police Department is too small to implement its own behavioral-health program but said he was interested in collaborating with other small police agencies to pool resources and potentially share a behavioral-crisis or trauma-response position program, per the March 3 minutes.
At the March 3 meeting, Hopkins reminded the council that the sales tax would be generated not just by Ruston residents but by anyone who visits the city, per the minutes.
