On Dec. 7th, the Warrior City Council voted unanimously that all businesses within its police jurisdiction must start collecting one-half of the city's 3% sales tax, up to 1.5 miles outside the city. Affected business owners say they won't see any benefit, and now some are calling for a boycott.
"I'll drive twenty miles before I shop, I will not spend a penny in the City of Warrior," said Raymond Seaver, owner of Seatec in the Hayden area. "I went to Warrior. I got friends in Warrior. I love those people over there, but I can not abide by this thing that their mayor and their city council has done just to stab you in the back. It's despicable."
The new ordinance will force business owners operating within a mile and a half of Warrior to collect a penny and a half in sales tax, which would go straight back to Warrior.
"Most everybody's struggling to make payments now. A penny and a half, one and a half percent doesn't sound like much, but when you lump it all together it's quite a few dollars, quite a few," said Bill Logan, owner of Logan's General Store on State Hwy. 160 in Smoke Rise.
Warrior Mayor Rena Hudson says the city is within its rights to collect the tax within its police jurisdiction even though Warrior Police and Fire are not the primary responders for unincorporated communities in west Blount County.
"We have responded when there's been calls made, but 911 would inform Blount County first then of course West Blount with the fire and in this particular case the sheriff's department with the law enforcement so it's just a matter of continuing what has been done," said Rena Hudson, Mayor of Warrior.
Hudson says they mainly respond to requests for back up from other agencies.
"This is state highway. Normally we've got the state troopers working a wreck. All the other times it's Blount County. I've never seen Warrior Police on the road," said Richard Mullins, owner of Mullins Heating & Air Conditioning in the Hayden area. “We’re all suffering in this economy. What makes it right for a city to jump a county line and tax residents that have never been in their city? We're all suffering and we can't afford it any more than they can."
Blount County Commission Chairman and Probate Judge David Standridge and District Attorney Tommy Rountree both question the legality of the new sales tax.
Warrior city attorney Jim Ward says state law allows them to collect it and Warrior is not the first city to do it.
