The Marshall City Council is exploring whether to ask the city’s voters to enact a new sales tax for the purpose of maintaining city streets.

Members of the Municipal Services Committee discussed the idea during their meeting Monday evening. Councilman Drew Green says the city has relied on general revenue and proceeds from the outsourcing of the sanitation department to maintain the city’s streets, but those funds are nearly spent.
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This past year Marshall tapped into general revenues to complete their street repair schedule that totaled nearly 788-thosuand dollars. The plan called for nine streets to undergo milling and overlay, while another 30 received slurry coating. Green says he’s explored the idea with residents in his ward for several months. He added that from those discussions came a consensus that any new tax would need to build trust in a short time for voters to allow it to remain.

The committee spent part of Monday’s meeting reviewing ballot language used by other cities when they sought to establish their own transportation sales tax. Any language devised would need to receive the approval of the full Marshall City Council no later than Jan. 27, the last day that ballot measures can be submitted to the Saline County Clerk for inclusion on April’s ballot.