Exercise 6.2

City Council

The St. Charles City Council met Tuesday night and voted to implement a one-cent sales taxes in order to prevent layoffs and allow the city to expand its services.

Due to the poor financial state of St. Charles and the strong possibility of having to lay off workers next year, the council voted 5–2 in favor of the sales tax.

Joe Black, the city treasurer, explained the benefits of this sales tax to the council. A one-cent sales tax would raise about $400,000 for the city and would allow for garbage pickups to be increased to twice a week instead of just once, he said.

Mayor Sadecki, who disagreed with the sales tax, said that the people are being taxed enough already, and what they really want is to cut back on city spending, not have their taxes increased.

The council also discussed a rezoning petition to relocate a cemetery so that a new supermarket could be built on Forbes Street, but the council voted 5–2 against the petition. Carl Erskine, who was the developer of the project, said that he would pay all the costs of relocating the graves to Peaceful Rest Cemetery and that he thinks rezoning would benefit both the neighborhood and the city. The audience members in the council had several negative comments regarding the petition.

Walt Dropo, the president of the Forbes Street Residents Association, claimed that the zoning commission did not think about how this rezoning would affect the neighborhood and that the cemetery is simply too old to be moved.

“Nobody on my street wants the supermarket. We have plenty of places to go shop. We don’t need this,” another audience member commented.

The council also discussed a proposal to start licensing morticians in the city, but the proposal was eventually tabled after some financial disagreements arose among the council members and some audience members that happened to be morticians.