By Tabitha Evans Moore
EDITOR & PUBLISHER

It’s rare that I use this platform to voice an opinion for or against a ballot issue. And I understand why you voted “no” the first two times.

Moore County voters turned down a quarter-point increase in our local sales tax twice. In March 2024, the measure failed 590 to 378. That November, with turnout more than three times higher, it failed again, 2,234 to 1,259. The message was clear both times. Money is tight, everything costs more, and nobody wants to pay more. I get it.

That feeling hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it’s worse. Consumer prices are up 3.7% over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Between the Iran war and tariffs on imported goods, families across Tennessee are feeling squeezed, and Moore County is no exception. So, when the same question shows up on the ballot a third time, I get the impulse to say no out of principle.

But when you remove the emotion, and just look at the numbers, I think it makes sense. I’m voting yes. Here’s my reasoning.

GAS PRICES NOT AFFECTED

Look closely at what’s driving prices up, and most of it comes down to one thing: energy. Energy prices are up 20.4% in a year. Gasoline alone is up 34.2%.

That hits Moore County harder than most places. About six in 10 of us work outside the county, and nearly all of us drive to get there. We drive to Winchester, Tullahoma, Shelbyville and Fayetteville, and sometimes beyond for work, appointments and errands. A typical commute here runs close to half an hour each way. For a driver covering that distance every workday, every dollar added to a gallon of gas costs roughly $450 a year. Farmers are getting hit hard by increased diesel prices.

That’s where your money is going. But the quarter-point sales tax increase doesn’t touch either.

Tennessee does not charge state or local option sales tax on gasoline. It doesn’t charge sales tax on residential electricity, natural gas or propane, either. The biggest increases hitting your budget right now aren’t affected by this vote at all.

WE ALREADY PAY IT NEXT DOOR

A quarter-point increase means 25 cents on every $100 you spend in Moore County. If your family spends $100 a week at Woodard’s Market and Dollar General, that’s about $13 a year.

On big purchases, the impact stops early. The local option tax only applies to the first $1,600 of any single item. Buy a refrigerator or a truck, and the most this increase can add is $4.

And if you do most of your shopping in Manchester, Tullahoma or Shelbyville, you’re already paying more than this. Coffee and Bedford counties already charge 9.75%, the state maximum — so does most of Tennessee. Moore County, at 9.5%, is one of only a handful of counties still below the cap.

In other words, a lot of us already pay this rate. We just pay it to somebody else’s county.

A PERK OF BEING A TOURIST TOWN

Last year, thanks to the local tourism officials, Moore County got its own tourism numbers. Visitors spent more than $15.5 million here in 2024, according to Tourism Economics and the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. More than 81% of in-person credit card transactions in this county come from visitors.

Read that again. Four out of every five card swipes in Moore County belong to someone who doesn’t live here. Being a tourist town is a two-sided coin, and in this respect, the modest sales tax increase allows us to take advantage of that fact.

The more than 350,000 people who come every year to tour the distillery, eat on the Square and buy a souvenir bottle already pay most of our sales tax. They already save every Moore County household about $517 a year in state and local taxes, according to the state report. A quarter-point increase asks them to chip in a little more for the roads they drive on and the deputies who keep them safe while they’re here.

Voting no doesn’t protect your wallet much. It mostly protects them.

This newspaper estimated in August that the increase would bring in well over $100,000 a year, possibly close to $183,000. Under state law, half of local option sales tax revenue goes to education. The rest can go toward needs Metro already has on the table, like a new school bus or the jail renovation.

For a county our size, that’s real money. And most of it comes from people who’ll never see a Moore County property tax bill. Also, each cent paid by those who come to visit our community means less property tax burden for those who live here. It’s a win-win.

A WORD ABOUT TRUST

I know some of you voted “no” the first two times not because of the math, but because you don’t trust what Metro will do with the money. That’s fair. Trust is earned, and government should have to earn it every budget cycle, but as someone who has sat through budget committee meetings for the past 20 years, I can tell you that Moore County’s budget mostly isn’t large enough for grift. We just don’t enjoy those kinds of margins.

We’re a small county with a small budget who survives in part thanks to things like department heads who constantly seek and apply for state and federal grants, teachers who pay out-of-pocket for classroom supplies, a nonprofit animal rescue that acts as de facto animal control, and volunteer firefighters who leave their families at all hours to protect their neighbors.

It’s easy to read state and national headlines, and buy into the “fraud, waste, and abuse” narrative, and I’m not saying that doesn’t happen at the federal level, but in my experience, Moore County’s finances are handled with extreme care, because local elected and appointed officials know the people their decisions affect most. There’s no anonymity in a small town.

So, vote yes, and then show up at local public meeting. Ask respectful questions. Hold the people we elect accountable for every dollar. That’s how this is supposed to work. And I promise this newspaper will be there asking those questions, too.

But don’t leave tens of thousands of tourist dollars on the table because you’re angry about the price of gas. The people driving up the cost of filling your tank aren’t on this ballot.

Moore County is and always has been about community and neighbors taking care of neighbors. This is a small collective price to pay, and mostly we won’t be the ones paying it. Vote “for” the Sales and Use Tax Referendum question on the November 3 ballot. Early voting continues through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the County Building. •

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