{"id":110901,"date":"2015-07-21T15:23:56","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T21:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pot-tax-proposal-faces-test\/"},"modified":"2015-07-21T15:23:56","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T21:23:56","slug":"pot-tax-proposal-faces-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pot-tax-proposal-faces-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Pot-tax proposal faces test"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The city of Durango is proposing a new 5 percent tax on recreational marijuana. The tax would have to go to the voters in November for approval. The city will take public comment on the issue on Tuesday.<\/span>Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A new recreational marijuana tax and a measure to allow the city to lease out Internet infrastructure to private companies could be on Durango ballots in November.<\/p>\n

But the City Council is looking to hear from Durangoans on both issues Tuesday before putting them to a vote.<\/p>\n

The city is examining a special 5 percent sales tax on recreational marijuana to help fund upgrades to city buildings that can\u2019t be funded with existing revenue streams, said Sherri Dugdale, an assistant to the city manager.<\/p>\n

The buildings that likely need to be replaced or remodeled include the Durango Police Station, the General Services Building, the Carnegie Building, City Hall and River City Hall.<\/p>\n

The police department is the highest priority for the city because it is small and dated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to see the police department moved,\u201d said Councilor Sweetie Marbury.<\/p>\n

A different location could give police officers room to park their vehicles off the street, and it would allow the current building on East Second Avenue to be converted into a business.<\/p>\n

The city is polling residents on whether they would prefer raising property taxes, sales taxes or instating a special sales tax on marijuana to fund construction. No estimates are available about how much construction could cost.<\/p>\n

The city is also looking at what purpose the tax\u2019s revenue would fund when those building projects are finished.<\/p>\n

City Manager Ron LeBlanc recently encouraged councilors to consider not restricting the funds for specific purposes so it could give future city leaders flexibility to use the money as needed.<\/p>\n

But Marbury said the money should be earmarked to some degree.<\/p>\n

The city seeks feedback on a prwoposed measure that would allow the city to lease infrastructure to private communication companies.<\/p>\n

The city has more Internet fiber and conduit than it needs, and it would prefer the ability to lease it out. But a 2005 state law prevents this kind of agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

fund city building improvements<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6371],"tags":[1020,13,308,135],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-110901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mt-news","tag-durango-city-council","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-local-elections","tag-marijuana"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110901"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=110901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}