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Our View: Hayden’s budget woes remain

At issue

On Tuesday, Hayden voters approved a proposal that stands to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual sales tax revenue from the sale of commercially grown marijuana

Our view

Despite the proposal’s approval, Hayden still faces significant budget difficulties that must be addressed long-term

In a special election Tuesday, Hayden voters approved a measure that will allow the commercial cultivation of marijuana for retail and medical uses under limited circumstances.

The results ratified the Hayden Town Council’s 6-1 August vote to allow the establishment of such facilities in Hayden, in which marijuana will be grown and sold to dispensaries outside the town.

Our view

Despite the proposal’s approval, Hayden still faces significant budget difficulties that must be addressed long-term



Currently, retail recreational and medicinal marijuana sales are not permitted in Hayden, but some town officials thought allowing the grow operations would produce tax revenue that could help lift the town from an increasingly gloomy financial situation.

In November, Hayden residents approved, by a large margin, a ballot issue authorizing taxation of the then-potential grow operations at a rate between 7.5 percent and 15 percent. The town has estimated a 5 percent tax on marijuana grow operations there would generate $143,500 annually, suggesting taxation at the actual rates could put between $215,250 and $430,500 in additional tax revenues into the town’s coffers annually.



Our purpose is not to opine on the decision Hayden voters made. It’s unfortunate the town had to make this choice in the face of declining revenues and serious budgetary shortfalls — a condition that may have prompted some voters to weigh the issue more on the basis of a dire collective need than personal, moral convictions — but it was the town’s choice to make, and for that reason, we support its decision.

But even factoring in the additional tax revenues soon to be collected from marijuana cultivators, the town’s budgetary problems remain, and tough choices still loom ahead, unless leaders and residents can find ways of bringing income into line with expenditures.

“The future doesn’t look good,” Mayor Jim Haskins said Dec. 9 in a Town Board meeting. “We’re going to have to cut services or cut employees, and I don’t know how we’re going to be able to cut employees. The town is going to have to make some tough decisions.”

Hayden’s town budget for 2016, approved by the council in early December, again calls for deficit spending. For 2016, the town has budgeted $2,384,000 in general fund expenses with projected revenues of $1,979,000, representing a shortfall of more than $400,000 that will have to be drawn from the town’s dwindling reserves — reserves town leaders estimate will be exhausted by the end of 2017.

Sales tax collections — Hayden’s principal revenue stream — have steadily declined in recent years, even as expenditures have gone in the opposite direction, and the problem reaches far beyond the results of Tuesday’s vote.

And while the town’s approval of marijuana cultivation and the attendant taxation of such endeavors will serve to temporarily plug the hole in the dike, in our view, it is at best a temporary fix.

A permanent solution must be found — a way for the town to not only survive, but thrive into the future.

Now that the marijuana cultivation issue has been settled and the town has bought itself some time, we encourage Hayden’s leaders and residents to undertake a detailed examination of expenses versus revenues as the first step in determining how the town found itself in this unenviable situation in the first place and devise a permanent and sustainable plan to remedy it.

With Tuesday’s vote having relieved a bit of the pressure, the time to undertake this important work is now.


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