Voters To Decide Future Of City Sales Tax
Stanley’s 1½% city sales tax will come to a vote on Tuesday, June 9 as part of the city’s election. The city sales tax was made possible years ago when Stanley established a Home Rule Charter. The advantage to the sales tax collection over property tax collection is that everyone who shops in the City of Stanley shares in the payment with the sales tax going to fund several areas including economic development, city infrastructure needs, the city park district, the library and Mountrail County Medical Center.
The city’s sales tax has been used to fund a number of things throughout the community and by the city over the years since its inception. The 1½% city sales tax is divided with 20% going to the city’s infrastructure fund, 20% to the city parks, 3.33333% to the library, 23.33334% to economic development and 33.33333% to the Mountrail County Medical Center.
Projects funded by the economic development portion of the sales tax fund in the past several years have included support for the Stanley Commercial Club for its Stanley promotion activities as well as supplies like new banners, “Welcome to Stanley” signs, Christmas lights and more. It has also helped in the form of grants and/or interest free loans for new businesses and/or daycare startups as well as improvements and equipment for existing businesses. It has provided grants to help many of the facilities like the school, Flickertail Village and Mountrail Bethel Home.
The park board share has helped to fund the basic operations of the park district including operating and their major project of putting in the new the outdoor swimming pool.
The library share has been used for several updates to the facility, as well as providing services to the entire community.
The city’s infrastructure share has been used to cover costs associated with the planned improvements. That has included work in Country Estates, and the three phases of the capital improvement projects that have addressed the aging infrastructure in some of the original parts of the city. They also addressed issues with streets in the John Rian Addition and did chip seals to extend the viability of the streets. The city is currently looking at capital improvement project phase four for the 2027 construction season. The ability to use this fund, along with oil and gas revenues, to help cover those costs has meant the city has been able to move forward with projects without asking voters for additional mill levies on their projects to cover the work. They have also been able to reduce the special assessments in recent projects by fully covering street improvements and covering a larger share, with the property owners seeing less costs.
Earlier this year, the city shared information that showed over the past five years the city has invested around $12.5 million in projects with an estimated cost of $4.6 million for CIP3.
Looking at that original $12.5 million, they had received $187,904 in grants for the projects and the city share had been $11,173,866. That left $1,189,838 to be certified in special assessments.
“We have been receiving a portion of the 1 ½ cent city sales tax for the Mountrail County Medical Center since July of 2013. For fiscal year 2045-2025, we received $485,170.71 in funding,” states MCMC CEO, Steph Everett. “For rural, community hospitals it is extremely difficult to recruit staff such as Nurses and Physical Therapists so we can continue to offer a full complement of care here at home. Taking into consideration the needs of our community, MCMC has been proactive at supplementing our local talent with these specialists, while also keeping our facility stocked with state of the art equipment to ensure safe, quality care for our patients. The money from this sales tax guarantees that we can continue to operate our Critical Access Hospital to the best of our ability to serve our community.”