Newark City Manager Tom Coleman will propose a tax on alcohol sold by retailers at Monday’s Council meeting to help deal with a difficult budget year.
Newark’s non-police expenditures decreased by half a million dollars last year. But police costs went up $1.9 million.
Labor costs have skyrocketed since 2020, and Coleman said Newark needs to find creative ways to raise more revenue.
“At a certain point, you can only cut so deep in your budget before you get diminishing returns,” Coleman said. “And we think we're there with a lot of the things that we do, and at that point, anything further would be a reduction in service quality, which is something that our community has been reluctant to do in the past.”
Coleman said he’s not sure this proposal will win approval from City Councilmembers. He previously proposed increasing the maximum lodging tax in January but failed to garner Council support.
Levying a retail alcohol sales tax is Coleman’s next attempt to increase revenue for the city.
“I don't think it's a secret to anyone that Newark has a lot of house parties, and those house parties have a pretty big impact on our police budget, code enforcement, property maintenance budget because we have to go do enforcement,” Coleman said.
Coleman added the city’s overtime budget for police and property maintenance was over $20 thousand for last weekend alone, dealing with St. Patrick’s Day weekend parties.
In order for the resolution to pass, six out of seven Councilmembers will need to vote in favor. Coleman said Councilmember Jay Bancroft will not be in attendance Monday.
“We would need 100% support of the six council members that will be present on Monday night,” Coleman said. “So it's hard to say whether it's going to have full support. I'm not sure… The legislative session obviously ends at the end of June, so we don't want to wait too long. So our hope is that if Council is supportive, we would get that direction this Monday. If they're not supportive, I could see this and the previous lodging tax discussion coming back once we have a full council after the election break.”
Coleman said he’s also considering a proposal to levy a cannabis tax in Newark.
If this measure goes through, it will require General Assembly approval to be added to the city charter.
