{"id":55897,"date":"2025-12-09T07:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/55897\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T07:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:05:14","slug":"lenoir-city-passes-first-reading-of-possible-sales-tax-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/55897\/","title":{"rendered":"Lenoir City passes first reading of possible sales tax increase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LENOIR CITY, Tenn. (WVLT) &#8211; Residents in Lenoir City could soon be paying more in taxes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Monday night, City Council passed the first reading of an ordinance to possibly increase the city sales tax.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Currently, the tax is 2%. The ordinance is looking to raise this to 2.75%. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">City council said the money from this increase would go support the Housing and Community Preservation Fund through the Loudon County Habitat for Humanity and the Lenoir City Parks and Recreation Department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Lenoir City Mayor Tony Aikens said residents would have the final say on the tax increase.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cLenoir City government is giving the citizens the choice to pass this,\u201d said Aikens. \u201cWe\u2019re telling them what the need is, we\u2019re telling them the need for housing for our veterans for our seniors, and what better than the Habitat for Humanity to lead that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"link | text-reset d-block h-100 w-100\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wvlt.tv\/page\/wvlt-news-and-weather-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_self\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"wvlt\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/EAFJZDKWSJFMFGBA5C5FOEW7NM.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Tony Gibbons, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity, spoke during the meeting and is advocating for the sales tax increase.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He said it can help people that are considered low-income individuals in Lenoir City.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThey\u2019re part of our community; they\u2019re part of the fabric of not just today but yesterday and tomorrow,\u201d Gibbons said. \u201cI know that sounds lofty and picturesque, but they\u2019re the people of the community to let\u2019s invest in them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The ordinance still needs to pass a second reading before it heads to the ballot to be voted on in the November 2026 election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 WVLT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LENOIR CITY, Tenn. (WVLT) &#8211; Residents in Lenoir City could soon be paying more in taxes. Monday night,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14203,30918,836,17774,30917,12186,128,130,129,17286,2261,5800,7426],"class_list":{"0":"post-55897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-ballot","9":"tag-east-tennessee","10":"tag-election","11":"tag-increase","12":"tag-lenoir-city","13":"tag-november","14":"tag-reading-city","15":"tag-reading-city-headlines","16":"tag-reading-city-news","17":"tag-sales-tax","18":"tag-tax","19":"tag-taxes","20":"tag-tennessee"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}