Lincoln County officials hope to extend penny sales tax for five years

CHANDLER — You can't underestimate the value of the penny sales tax in Lincoln County, said one of the three officials charged with colleting and dispersing its funds.

Sure, you can calculate total revenue generated by the tax — $205,703 per month, in fact — but it's the progress that wouldn't take place on the county's roads and bridges that you'd notice first, said District 2 Commissioner Ricky Taylor.

On Tuesday, Taylor is asking voters countywide to extend for five years a tax that's been on the book for 15.

“If we didn't have it we could only operate out of our highway cash,” Taylor said Friday. “We've built bridges, we've spent the money on buying big culverts for your road, we put out gravel — it's just very important.”

Sixty percent of the revenue generated off the proposed tax would be allocated to county road and bridge projects — or about $40,000 per month for each of the county's three districts, Taylor said.