Northwood voters approve sales tax increase to support town's park
Jun. 19—NORTHWOOD, N.D. — Voters in Northwood, North Dakota, approved a sales tax increase in the June 14 election to help fund Northwood's park, pool and golf course.
On Election Day, 59% of voters voted to adopt an amendment to the home rule charter to authorize an additional 0.5% sales tax, while 41% voted against the measure. According to the ballot measure, the proceeds of the tax increase will be dedicated to the Northwood Park Board for construction, repairs, maintenance, management and improvements.
Vote totals are still preliminary, unofficial counts. In total, 217 votes were counted.
Josh Nelson, a member of the Park Board, says the vote shows how much people in Northwood appreciate the public spaces in town.
"The local pool is a hub for anybody from 8 to 15 years old — that's where they're out all day long," said Nelson. "There are kids in the park all day long, and I think people realize how important of a lifestyle that is for a small community."
The Park Board oversees Northwood D.L. Campbell Park, the Northwood Pool and the Northwood Golf Course. Each location needs upkeep, said Nelson.
"What this half percent really does is help us maintain what we have, but it still gives us the ability to hopefully make improvements at the same time," said Nelson.
Currently, the city of Northwood has a 7.5% sales tax, and the extra 0.5% for the park will bring it to 8%. Nelson says in fiscal year 2021, that would have brought in around $60,000 for parks.
A "Save the Pool" project at the Northwood Pool was recently completed that fixed cracks in the deck of the pool, and fundraising for the project took around 12 years to complete, said Nelson.
"It's a public pool, but we had to have pancake feeds and spaghetti suppers and things like that to get people to donate money to save our pool," said Nelson. "For a public pool, it took us 12 years to fix it. What happens if something else were to go bad at the same time? We wouldn't be able to fix it."
The new tax revenue will help avoid scenarios like this in the future, he says.
Despite working with a limited budget and a need for fundraising, improvements to the parks and pool over the years have been visible, says Tami Rygg, a Northwood resident. Her two sons, now 18 and 20, grew up playing baseball in the parks and swimming in the pool. She listed off the improvements to the park she's seen over the years — new fences at the baseball fields, new dugouts, a new diving board at the pool and landscaping work.
"They've been constantly making improvements," said Rygg.
The sales tax revenue will allow the Park Board to keep low fees for summer recreation programs like T-ball, Little League Baseball, Babe Ruth League Baseball, girls softball, swimming and golf memberships. In Northwood, it costs $50 for children to play in Little League, while in some nearby towns, Nelson says it can cost $125. While the golf course is expensive to maintain, the Park Board does not want to burden golfers with excessive costs.
"We don't want to raise our rates to the point where people don't want to be members for either because we have a community that's older, and older people tend to have a little more funds, but our younger people don't in a small town, so we don't want to price them out of golf," said Nelson.
Another priority with tax revenue will be to pay employees more, with the goal of keeping the pool, park programs and golf course staffed.
"This year we're pretty lucky, but most years it's actually hard to find kids that want to be lifeguards," said Nelson. "If we can pay them a little more, maybe they'll come back every summer."
Rygg says many of the kids that grow up going to the park and swimming in the pool end up getting summer jobs at the pool or golf course in high school.
"It's kind of like a circle of life thing — you use it, and then you end up supporting it and it supports you," said Rygg. "It's so valuable to any small town."
