The Salem City Council has agreed to keep the one-cent sales tax on groceries once the state stops collecting the tax October 1st.
Mayor Nic Farley emphasized this was not a new tax.
“During the last legislative session, the general assembly and the governor’s office basically took off the state mandate but let municipal governments decide whether they would continue doing this,” Farley said. “This is not a new tax, it’s nothing new that we implement, we just have to vote whether we will continue receiving it. We can always go back and rescind it later if we find another revenue stream, but for our best estimates it’s between $160,000 to $180,000 per year that we’ve already planned in this year’s budget.”
The grocery tax at the state level will not be collected after September 30th and payments from the collections are due to end December 31st.
Councilman Frank Addison feels most would favor keeping the tax if the alternative was laying off two police officers.
The only no vote came from councilman Gerald Molenhour.
