Montgomery County Commission chairman Doug Singleton will propose a change at the commission's next meeting in January to the 1% county sales tax that funds public schools.
Singleton told 1819 News in a recent interview that revenue from the 1% county sales tax currently goes 100% to Montgomery and Pike Road Schools. If his proposal is approved by the commission, 90% of the revenue would go to public schools and 10% would go to the county for health care, public safety, and economic development.
"The county collects 2.5 cents on sales tax. About 2012/2013 since the ad valorem tax and property tax were so low in Montgomery County, the county commission voted to allocate one cent of the 2.5 cents of the sales tax that we collect to go to public education. It went to Montgomery Public Schools, and then when Pike Road schools became in existence, they got a small piece of that based on the state enrollment numbers. The money has been going to them. The money has increased over the years. What I'm proposing is that we share in those proceeds going forward, so the county would keep 10% of that 1-cent sales tax. It comes out to about $41 million a year total, so 10% would be around $4 million that the county would keep, and 90% of it would continue to go to public education between Pike Road and Montgomery Public Schools," Singleton said.
"This money would be used to help us to sustain and support health care, help us with public safety by adding more deputies and investing in more public safety, it'll help us with economic development to attract more and more industries to Montgomery County which in turn would increase the ad valorem tax for Montgomery Public Schools and Pike Road Schools so it's a win/win for everybody involved for the county to keep 10% of it," he continued. "There will be no capping or cutting for public education, we're just going to share it together and we can all work together to increase our tax base and then we all win and we're able to sustain our hospitals which is very important because the hospital goes away, it hurts public education. People move out. They come to a town based on public education, public safety, and healthcare. So, we need all three pillars of those legs to be strong for us to continue to be successful in Montgomery County. That's all we're doing."
He continued, "We're not looking to try to not fund education. They still will be getting basically the same amount they got in 2025. There just won't be a big increase for them in '26. We'll just share in the proceeds as sales tax continues to grow and we continue to invest in our healthcare and public safety which is going to end up helping the public school systems."
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