Mobile’s council approved a one-cent sales tax increase on a 5-2 vote. An analysis of how Mayor Sam Jones got what he wanted, what Gina Gregory extracted in return, and what might have been.
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‘You Can’t Reform a Junkie With More Drugs’: Mobile Business Owners Sound Off on the Sales Tax Plan
Retailers, accountants, builders and executives across Mobile weighed in on the proposed one-cent sales tax increase, with most arguing City Hall must cut spending before reaching into shoppers’ pockets.
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One Vote Short: Mobile’s Sales Tax Standoff Hardens Into Political Chicken
With an $18.5 million deficit and a five-vote requirement, Mayor Sam Jones fell a single council vote short of a one-cent sales tax increase, leaving three members holding extraordinary leverage.
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Mobile’s Highest-Paid City Employees Named as Deficit Looms
Documents tied to Mobile’s effort to close a projected $18.5 million budget gap listed the city’s 100 highest-paid employees, topped by the public works director.
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Sales Tax Hike Falls 3-3-1 as Mobile Council Rejects Jones, and Layoffs Loom
Buried under hundreds of angry emails and calls, Mayor Sam Jones’s penny sales tax died in a 3-3-1 vote on Tax Day. As many as 300 city jobs are now in question.
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Counting to Five: The Sales Tax Vote Rests on One Council Member
Mayor Sam Jones has made his case for a penny sales tax. The measure was laid over Tuesday, and the arithmetic on a seven-member council now points to a single undecided vote.
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Jones Abandons Pay Cut, Asks Council for a Penny Sales Tax Increase
With city workers descending on City Hall, Mayor Sam Jones dropped his 10-percent pay cut and took a one-cent sales tax increase to the council’s finance committee instead.
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Mobile’s $18.5 Million Hole: Every Option on the Table, and None of Them Painless
Facing an $18.5 million shortfall, Mobile officials weighed pay cuts, a sales tax increase, a garbage collection fee and layoffs. Each carried a political price nobody wanted to pay.
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Mobile Carries Its Courtroom Into Hillsdale, and Puts 500 Employees Through Service Training
Mobile’s municipal court moved a session out of Government Plaza and into the Hillsdale Community Center to hear blight and litter cases, while the mayor put more than 500 city employees through customer service training.
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Mobile Firefighters Union Endorses Bess Rich for Mayor
The Mobile firefighters’ union backed Bess Rich for mayor ahead of the Aug. 23 city election, the second endorsement from an organized city employee group for the former councilwoman’s campaign.