GRANVILLE – Come July 1, shoppers and diners frequenting the numerous University Town Centre businesses will start seeing a small, additional charge when it comes time to settle up.
That’s the date Granville’s 1% municipal sales tax takes effect.
Mayor Patty Lewis said the town is anticipating $2.5 million in sales tax collections in the upcoming 2027 fiscal year.
That’s in addition to the town’s $8,051,756 spending plan for the upcoming year, which includes $3.5 million in business and occupation taxes and an unassigned fund balance of just over $2.1 million.
“The way that our ordinance was set up, it is in a special revenue fund. So, it’s not part of our general fund. It’s a different budget,” Lewis said. “And that budget was approved by council.”
While all budgets are educated estimates, trying to predict about how much money will be generated by a newly implemented sales tax is particularly tricky.
In March 2020, as the city of Morgantown prepared a budget anticipating its first two quarters of sales tax collections, city administration conservatively estimated the city could receive as much as $3.75 million.
The number ended up being $5.4 million.
Today, Morgantown anticipates some $10.7 million of its $41.8 million FY 2027 budget will come by way of sales tax revenue.
Likewise, Lewis said Granville is playing it slow.
“We budgeted $2.5 million. We don’t know if that’s going to be high. We don’t know if it’s going to be low,” she said. “With the economy the way it is, you just really don’t know how things are going to happen in the next year. Things are more expensive. People may spend less money.”
The ordinance enacting Granville’s sales tax specifies the funds are to be used for capital improvement projects, but it also allows the transfer of sales tax dollars into the town’s general fund with the approval of council.
Lewis said the initial $2.5 million budgeted for FY 2027 will include $500,000 to the town’s general fund, $500,000 to support public safety and $1.5 million for streets and transportation projects.
She notes the town has large improvement projects looming, including the paving of University Town Centre Drive.
Further, she said the sale tax is a guard against legislative encroachment on municipal revenue sources.
“We lost B&O from new car sales because the state legislature, a couple years back, decided to phase it out. It’s kind of scary because you don’t always know what the legislature is thinking,” she said. “We’ve heard so many times, many of them make comments that the B&O tax is antiquated, but yet they have no solution on how you replace that money. Now, the last couple of years, they have not touched the B&O, but if you’re running a municipality – town, city, whatever – and they keep chipping away without a solution on how to make up for that, it’s a concern.”
As with the sales taxes in Morgantown, Westover and every other city sales tax in place across West Virginia, Granville implemented the tax via Home Rule – which gives the state’s municipalities freedom within the law to address specific or unique challenges.
Granville’s application to the West Virginia Home Rule Board was approved in April 2025.
