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Restaurant Owners Want Lower Sales Tax
The Galesburg Lodging and Restaurant Association is hoping strength in numbers will work in their favor when it comes to their desire to have the city's sales tax lowered.

The current sales would go up to ten and a half percent for restaurants when the new one-percent sales tax increase for education construction projects voters approved in November takes effect in a few months.

But association members say that tax will cost them too much, saying it will affect business and what they can pay their employees.

Chez Willy's co-owner Brenda Egenlauf thinks a united front of sorts will get the City Council to lower the two-percent restaurant portion of the sales tax.

"We have a group of people that will go, and we all come and support you and be there at the meetings the city council meetings and get people there. We have to have,... we employ a lot of people in this town and if we start losing employees because they're not making the tips, we've got to pay the extra taxes because obviously we're not having customers come in."

The association decided to come up with a sub-committee that will work on a formal plan they will submit to the city administration, which is the route Mayor Sal Garza urged the group to take.

Garza says, however, if the association was so concerned with the sales tax rate going up, they should have gone to the city before the November election, not after.
01 19 11 by Newsroom
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