LAWTON – Early voting on the Comanche County sales tax proposal will be held Thursday and Friday, February 25-26, at the County Courthouse in downtown Lawton, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. each day.
On Election Day, Tuesday, March 2, the polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at each of the county’s 38 precincts.
Voters will be asked to extend Comanche County’s three-eighths of a cent sales tax for 10 years.
The existing tax was approved in an election held June 24, 2014, and expires Dec. 31, 2021, according to a resolution the Board of County Commissioners adopted on September 8, 2020. The commissioners assert in the resolution that “it is essential that the term of the sales tax levy should be extended” to Dec. 31, 2031.
COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS AMONG RECIPIENTS OF TAX PROCEEDS
The Comanche County Fairgrounds in Lawton is one of the recipients of the proceeds from the levy.
“We use that money for operating expenses and to put on the Free Fair and the Spring Livestock Show,” said Richard Pool, executive director of the fairgrounds.
The livestock show started Monday and has attracted youths from throughout southwest Oklahoma who are exhibiting their cattle, pigs, sheep and goats. “We had at least 200 kids who showed 256 pigs yesterday,” Pool said Wednesday.
The Comanche County Saddle and Sirloin Club, a non-profit organization that supports youth in agriculture in southwest Oklahoma, organizes and operates the Comanche County Spring Livestock Show and Premium Sale. “It enables these kids to showcase their animals and make a little money,” Pool said. “It’s a great opportunity to show these kids that raising livestock can be profitable.”
The livestock show also “brings the community together,” he added.
Nationwide, the average age of ranchers today is about 75, Pool said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to pass the torch to a younger generation.”
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the Comanche County Free Fair attracted several thousand children and adults to the fairgrounds in September. Events and activities include various commercial and local agricultural exhibits, including livestock, arts and crafts, award-winning farm produce and 4-H and FFA displays, a horse show and a petting barnyard featuring donkeys, llamas and pygmy goats, plus antique tractor and farm equipment displays.
“We’re trying to make agriculture attractive to today’s youth,” Pool said. “A lot of kids don’t know that eggs come from chickens and milk comes from cows; they think those products come from a grocery store.”
Agriculture also “teaches kids about responsibility,” Pool said. Children raised on a farm or ranch “know how to work.”
LEVY PRODUCED $5M LAST YEAR
The sales tax produced $5,057,486 for Comanche County over the past 12 months, Oklahoma Tax Commission records reflect.
Central District County Commissioner Johnny Owens said the county sales tax “is a must” because it benefits every resident of Comanche County.
The primary recipient of the proceeds from the county sales tax is the Comanche County Detention Center, Owens noted. “If we didn’t have that jail, we’d have to send all of our detainees somewhere else.”
Already Comanche County is sending its overflow inmates to a neighboring county. Because of a severe coronavirus outbreak last year, compounded by a long-standing record of inmate crowding, the state Health Department imposed a 95% cap on admissions to the CCDC.
Consequently, although the detention center has a design capacity of a maximum 283 inmates, the CCDC is limited to no more than 269 detainees. The remaining space is reserved for isolating inmates who contract COVID-19 or any other contagious ailment in the future.
Since May 19, 2020, additional Comanche County detainees have been lodged in the Tillman County Law Enforcement Center at Frederick at a cost of $45 each day per inmate.
HOW PROCEEDS WILL BE DIVIDED
The resolution the county commissioners adopted last September scheduled the election for March 2, 2021. It also specified that “the current administrative intent of the Board of County Commissioners” is to allocate the proceeds from the three-eighths of a cent sales tax in the following manner:
• 80% is earmarked for operation of the Comanche County Detention Center.
CCDC expenses totaled $3.83 million in Fiscal Year 2018-19 (pre-coronavirus). Those bills included facilities maintenance, inmate expenses (bedding, hygiene items and uniforms), workers’ compensation and liability insurance, meals, medical expenses, salaries and wages, staff expenses (drug testing, training, staff uniforms, travel, and staff supplies), and utilities.
Of the remaining 20% of the sales tax revenue:
• 27% is for capital improvements and operational costs of the Comanche County Fairgrounds.
• 26% is allocated for capital improvements and operational costs of volunteer fire departments in Comanche County, to help finance rural fire protection.
• 17% is to be deposited in the county’s Capital Improvement Contingency Fund.
• 15% is to help pay operational expenses of the county Sheriff’s Department.
• 15% is devoted to “industrial and economic development efforts” of the Comanche County Industrial Development Authority.
The CCIDA is “doing a great job,” Commissioner Owens said Wednesday. Revenue the CCIDA receives from the county tax are vital in support of the organization’s efforts to “bring jobs to Lawton and contribute to its prosperity and growth.”
FUNDING RATIOS HAVE CHANGED
The funding ratios in the latest proposal have been changed from the original allocations.
The resolution adopted by the Board of Commissioners on April 7, 2014, split the tax proceeds in the following manner:
• 66% (two-thirds) of the revenue was allocated to “capital improvements and operational costs” of the county jail.
Of the remaining one-third:
• 48% was earmarked for the Comanche County Industrial Authority.
• 17% went to the Comanche County Fairgrounds.
• 16% was devoted to rural fire protection.
• 10% was deposited in the county’s Capital Improvement Contingency Fund.
• 9% went to the Sheriff’s Department.