LISBON — Promotion of the 1% sales tax renewal kicked off Wednesday, with Columbiana County commissioners and other officials stressing the need and what losing the tax could mean.

“I just don’t know how the county could function without it,” former commissioner Tim Weigle said.

Instead of sleeping in on his first Wednesday as a regular citizen, the recent retiree said he was there to support the 1 percent sales tax 100 percent.

“This is a renewal. This is not new,” Weigle said.

Voters downed the county’s 1% sales tax on the Nov. 5 general election ballot, with commissioners having two more opportunities to place it on the ballot before the tax expires at the end of this year.

Commissioner Mike Halleck opened the first of two required public hearings regarding the sales tax by acknowledging that loss.

“Our sales tax failed miserably. A lot of the blame or credit goes to verbiage,” he said.

The ballot language did not state the fact that the tax was a continuation of an existing tax, a tax that people making purchases of taxable items have been paying for well over 20 years.

“A sales tax is the fairest tax we have. You don’t buy anything, you don’t pay anything,” county Board of Developmental Disabilities Superintendent Bill Devon said, also stressing it’s a renewal.

Weigle talked about the fact that being a border county, a lot of people who don’t live here shop in places like Calcutta or Salem and pay the sales tax, which is a benefit to voters in Columbiana County. Halleck also talked about going to the Walmart parking lot in Calcutta, where there are shoppers from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In Salem, shoppers come from Mahoning County which is right next door.

Weigle also said it’s important the voters know that commissioners could collect the 2 mills of property tax they gave up many years ago in a deal with taxpayers, but they haven’t, which has been to the advantage of property owners for more than 20 years.

County Treasurer Bryan Blakeman said a no vote is not a no vote for the tax, but a vote to cut services. He said it’s no different than if someone loses their job and has to cut expenses. In the county’s case, the cuts would come to 50 percent of services.

County Auditor Nancy Gause Milliken said she was here as an employee of the auditor’s office when the $10 million investment scandal happened in 1993 and the county had to make up the difference of what was stolen by taking it from the general fund, then getting a loan which had to be paid back through the general fund. The general fund took a hit.

She said they had bills stacked up and they had to sort out which bills to pay. Halleck recalled former Auditor Pat Hadley handing him a check that had to be driven to Akron so the power would not be shut off.

“I don’t ever want to go back to that. We need this sales tax,” Milliken said.

Commissioner Tim Ginter, in his first meeting with the board, agreed with everybody else’s comments.

“All of us have had to grapple with the increases in costs to everything. Everything has gone up for the county as well,” he said, mentioning gas, utilities and salt.

While everything has gone up, he said the 1% sales tax has stayed the same. The 1% sales tax is a renewal to stay at the same level.

Besides the 1% sales tax, the county also relies on a .5% sales tax that’s permanent, with both taxes together totaling more than $21 million and accounting for more than 70 percent of the general fund. If the 1% sales tax went away, that’s a $14 million hole to fill annually.

Halleck said since the vote, he’s been going through the appropriations cutting and cutting, but he’s only come up with $6 million that could be made up through cuts.

He said the sheriff’s office isn’t required to have a road patrol, so cruisers would be parked. He said if they took money from every office on the first floor of the courthouse, it wouldn’t make a dent. Blakeman said a third of his budgets goes to printing and mailing out tax bills, with Halleck noting that none of the property taxes go to the general fund. The majority go to area schools.

“This is a renewal. I can’t say that enough,” Halleck said. “It’s not our government. It’s all of your government. You will have people that are naysayers. They’re always looking for that gotcha moment.”

He said he’s more positive and also said, “I’m pretty darn proud of this county.”

Halleck reported that Common Pleas Court Judges Megan Bickerton and Scott Washam returned nearly $100,000 back to the general fund and thanked them for their diligence.

No one spoke against the sales tax during the hearing. A second required public hearing will be held at 9:05 a.m. Jan. 15 during the commissioners’ meeting next week on the first floor of the downtown courthouse in Lisbon.

When asked how commissioners will promote the sales tax, Halleck said they’re getting the officeholders together, who all live in different areas of the county, to talk about it. The hope is that officeholders will promote the sales tax in their different areas. He said he’s sure the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties in the county will help out.

He said there’s a plan to do some advertising and they’re mostly trying to get the message out that the sales tax is a renewal. There was a mistake in the ballot language.

“The consequences of not having that sales tax would be devastating,” Halleck said.