Moorhead Looks Into Raising Sales Tax To Fund Projects

If approved, the city will have to wait until the November 2022 election for voters to decide the plan's fate.

MOORHEAD, Minn.- The community of Moorhead is ready for the city to say out with the old and in with the new.

The city has listened to  the community’s demands and is looking for options to pay for potential projects rather than raising property taxes.

“At the city council meeting last night, the city council voted to move forward with the first step in considering a local option sales tax at a half-cent rate for the city of Moorhead,” says Lisa Bode, the Governmental Affairs Director of the city.

Five projects including building an aquatic center, a new city hall, and a library would be funded by the new sales tax.

“It’s something that would require some additional conversations with businesses to see whether they felt they could achieve more business by having more visitors, more activities in our community, but also how would it impact them on the revenue side. So we’d want to talk with them, we will talk to them quite a bit as we move into the further exploration stages, ” she says.

A local business says the city should look into investing in bringing more companies into the area.

“There’s not a day that goes by that multiple people do not ask me why aren’t their retail stores? Why there isn’t more industry? We need those types of businesses and then everything else will follow suit,” says Mary Fabre, the owner of Merle Norman Cosmetics.

She added that this possible plan won’t be affecting her business.

“As far as the money goes, I have a very loyal following, they won’t like to pay it, but I believe they will,” she says.

It is now on the Minnesota Legislature to review the sales tax request.