Helping service centers

Not all the hard-playing basketball players, cheering cheerleaders and enthusiastic fans who annually celebrate the victories and suffer the misfortunes of their high school teams during tournament time at the Bangor Auditorium can fail to notice that the old arena is in sad shape, with a faulty roof, failing electrical and ventilation systems and access problems, among other challenges. The auditorium needs drastic help, as does the attached civic center, perhaps requiring replacement. But as generous as the athletes and fans from all over Maine are to Bangor businesses, they and the tens of thousands of others who use the facility each year come nowhere near providing the $30 million needed to rebuild.

The problem of providing local amenities – whether it is, in Bangor, an auditorium or new waterfront development – is that they are used by a broad region but paid for locally. This is not unique to Bangor; nearly all Maine service centers face this challenge while at the same time watching the growth in nonprofit organizations narrow their property-tax base. It is a problem that 37 other states have addressed by allowing communities to charge a local sales tax of a penny or two, thereby generating revenue in part from the people who enjoy the services of the city but live in lower-taxed Sprawlsville, just beyond the city’s border.

But not the state of Maine, whose Legislature not only blocks – now nearly as a matter of pride – any attempt from service centers to approve such an option but sends back to communities far less of the sales tax that is generated than most other states. The result for service-center auditoriums, downtowns, parks, schools and a dozen municipal facilities is that they are underfunded even as local property-tax payers pay well above the state average.

Some concerns about local-option taxes are legitimate, including that they could drive businesses to the next town and that they push up Maine’s overall tax rate. But some important changes to the local option sales tax, spurred by the new Service Center Coalition, are being discussed that could produce a more sophisticated version of the tax that could both address those concerns and appease the Legislature. One idea might allow for a temporary tax for specific projects of regional importance. Another modification could require voter approval for such a tax and allow it only in communities where the property tax already is well above the state average. Still another plan might in-clude sharing part of the tax revenue with surrounding communities to help keep their property taxes down.

A combination of these ideas could discourage businesses from leaving while keeping its use rare and preventing it from being a regular part of the overall tax rate. Lawmakers might look more favorably on it because it could be used to fund projects that all of Maine could enjoy.

These proposals are far from a being in a finished form. Right now they are just ideas that will need a lot of support and further discussion if they are to both make sense for Maine and stand a chance of passage in the Legislature. But they are the kinds of issues that service centers should be looking at and ones state government should encourage.