On the heels of a successful $22.5 million school bond referendum vote last year, Hattiesburg residents overwhelmingly approved a 1 percent sales tax increase on hotels, motels and restaurants Tuesday night.
Hub City voters passed the sales tax referendum 2,574-611 – an 81 percent approval – for parks and recreation improvements and renovations at USM’s Reed Green Coliseum. Sixty percent of the vote was necessary for the sales tax to be approved.
The additional 1 percent in restaurant and hotel/motel tax revenue is expected to generate at least $2.4 million per year.
The election brought out just more than 11 percent of the city’s registered voters. Of the 26,996 registered voters in the Hub City, only 3,185 went to the polls Tuesday.
“I am incredibly excited about tonight,” Mayor Toby Barker said in City Hall after the vote. “I am thankful and incredibly humbled.”
Barker said the process involved in setting the election date has taken more than a year after state Sen. Billy Hudson introduced the Local and Private Bill in the 2018 Legislature. Gov. Phil Bryant signed the bill in March 2018 allowing the referendum, but the city was involved in a $22.5 million school bond renewal campaign at the time.
Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker
“In the last 21-22 months, this community has taken steps of faith together,” Barker said. “This vote today was a collective decision on what type of city Hattiesburg will be.”
The school bond was approved by 94 percent of the Hattiesburg Public School District voters on May 22, 2018. Hub City hotels and restaurants are already paying an additional 2-percent sales tax to help tourism, which was enacted in the 1990s, and the 1-percent tax would raise sales tax for restaurants, hotels and motels to 10 percent, which includes the state’s 7 percent sales tax.
The city recreation projects assume a $1.2 million per year revenue stream for about three years (June 1, 2019 through June 30, 2022). Any additional funding generated above the $1.2 million will go toward creating bike trails, sidewalks and multi-use paths across the city.
The additional 1-cent tax would begin collection on June 1, 2019, and be in effect until June 30, 2022. The other half generated by the tax increase would go toward the renovation of Reed Green Coliseum. These funds would be used to not only upgrade the facility to modern-day standards for seating and sound, but also to serve as a municipal arena.
In March 2018, University of Southern Mississippi President Dr. Rodney Bennett asked the Hattiesburg City Council for help in renovating Reed Green Coliseum. Looking at a 2015 study, Bennett and then-Athletic Director John Gilbert outlined their proposal to renovate the facility.
The funds that will come to the city for parks and recreation improvements will be spent across 17 individual projects:
• Miracle League inclusion field for children with special needs
• Lighting and drainage improvements to Ninth Street Ballpark
• Drainage improvements to soccer fields at Tatum Park
• Expansion of the walking path at Duncan Lake
• Tennis facility improvements at Tatum Park
• Light installation at Friendship Park in East Jerusalem neighborhood
• New girls softball field at Hattiesburg High
• Chain Park amphitheater
• Refinishing of Thames Elementary gym floor for use as an indoor recreation facility during non-school hours
• Splash pad at Sullivan Park in Palmers Crossing
• Tennis court installation on East Eighth Street
• Property acquisition for a park in Midtown
• Playground equipment upgrades at Kamper Park
• Splash pad at Timberton Park
• Renovations at old Hattiesburg American building into community arts center space
• Conversion of dilapidated and abandoned property into public green spaces, pocket parks and community gardens
• Additional blueway public access point on Leaf River