Galesburg City Council unanimously repeals push tax after hearing from business owners
GALESBURG — The video gaming “push tax” was officially repealed by members of the Galesburg City Council in an unanimous vote Monday evening.
The ordinance, which would have established a one cent tax whenever someone pushed the button to gamble on video game machines, was first adopted by the city in October 2021, but was never implemented after a public act prohibiting municipalities from adopting the tax went into effect the next month.
The agenda from Monday’s council meeting shows that the city had suspended enforcement of the push tax in order to “monitor pending litigation challenging the ordinance in other communities and allow operators time to establish a method for fair and accurate collection.”
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The city council’s vote Monday evening prohibits the city from ever adopting the push tax again in the future.
“We're relieved and we think city council was being very pro-business by repealing this,” Tom Pepmeyer said, the owner of The Corner Connection bar. “If they did implement it, it would have been a financial strain.”
“It would've been very tough,” Wil Azer said, owner of 156 East Bar & Grill. “I think that was the fairest decision they made. It's going to keep a lot of us open.”
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Fifth Ward City Council Member Jaclyn Smith-Esters said that she was the one who originally brought the ordinance to the council, but that after hearing from people and doing research, said she was “misled” on how it would work out.
“It was never to slam bar owners or anybody like that, to hurt businesses,” Smith-Esters said. “Absolutely not. it was more about how can we help our bottom line for our budget.”
Fourth Ward City Council Member Dwight White also noted that he originally voted in favor of the ordinance. White said the intention of the tax was not to beat up small business owners but that he does think funding is needed to help the city’s youth and community.
“If we went the wrong direction for you guys, we actually apologize for that,” White said. “But this is Galesburg as a city. We need everybody's help to do the things that need to be done here. And we do need money, taxes to be able to do things.”
Sixth Ward City Council Member Sarah Davis said she voted in favor of the ordinance as well in order to help the city’s budget but appreciated all the local business owners that have voiced their concerns.
“I don't want to see more taxes on people that are considered vice taxes, that we may be taking advantage of someone's hobby or someone's addiction,” Davis said. “I don't agree with the morality of that concept.”
First Ward City Council Member Bradley Hix and Third Ward City Council Member Kevin Wallace both mentioned that they voted against the ordinance the first time the push tax was introduced.
“For the record I have a lot of barrooms in my area and restaurants and I did vote it down the first time because I was concerned,” Wallace said. “But since that point in time we've been further educated by a young lady on the liquor commission and she gave us a lot of information to resolve.”
Monday’s address on the ordinance was technically the council’s first reading on repealing the push tax. In order to arrive at their unanimous repeal, the council first had to vote to strike down the prior moratorium on the push tax and vote on superseding the rules in order to vote on the repeal as a final reading.
Seventh Ward City Council Member Larry Cox abstained from voting to remove the moratorium. The other six council members voted in favor of removing the moratorium. The council then unanimously approved providing a final reading to the push tax’s repeal.
This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Galesburg City Council repeals push tax after hearing business owners
