On July 1st, the State of Illinois Gasoline Tax will be reinstated. Mayor Rod Davies explains how the transition will affect the City of Monmouth:
“Illinois has Income Tax and Corporate Personal Property Replacement Tax, they have changed the way they allocated those funds. The distribution to the units of local governments, the City, park districts, the schools, those who receive Replacement Tax, they had much larger receipts this last year in that line item. During the budget session, they had changed that pass through entity tax from Replacement Tax to Income Tax. They are not going to distribute as much of that money to the units of local government. That now has been taken out of the Replacement Tax, so that gets lowered and the amount we get is lowered, and now goes into the Income Tax line item. It will be a significant decline. Our Replacement Tax more than doubled this last year.”
Mayor Davies also stated the gas tax in Monmouth is lower than surrounding communities, however, Communications Director Ken Helms explains the location of Monmouth leads to higher prices at the pump:
“As far as from a numbers perspective that really stands different as far as Monmouth versus Galesburg or Burlington or some of the other areas like Macomb, Monmouth does sit right at the conversion point of three major highway arteries that are going through. If you look at our traffic accounts, which are public knowledge through the Department of the Highways, you can see our numbers are actually pretty high. It would be my guess the supply and demand has a lot to do with that.”
It is estimated the City of Monmouth will lose $200,000 to $300,000 in income from the State of Illinois.
