Jill Schramm/MDN Cody Campbell casts his ballot in the Minot Park District election Tuesday as his daughter, Keaton, gets a firsthand look at the voting process.

Minot voters rejected a sales tax measure for the Minot Park District by a narrow margin Tuesday.

The unofficial tally showed a 25-vote spread with 979 votes against and 954 votes in favor. The measure sought to impose a half percent sales tax in conjunction with a 12-mill decrease in the district’s general fund property-tax cap. It would have amounted to about a 40% reduction in the Minot Park District portion of a Minot property owner’s tax bill.

The city will canvass the vote on June 16, counting any eligible, late-arriving absentee ballots and finalizing the official tally.

Park Board President Perry Olson said the voters’ decision will mean the district will be in maintenance mode. The district won’t be pursuing a proposed new turf building.

It also means status quo on the tax level.

“I certainly don’t envision us raising them,” Olson said of taxes. “But this was an opportunity to cut them by 40%, which won’t happen now. So, I guess I’m disappointed, but as I’ve said the whole time, we work for the citizens and if this is the direction they’re telling us to go, albeit very close, this is the direction we’ll go.”

“We were going to let the voters decide, and that’s what they did today,” said Elly DesLauriers, executive director for Minot Parks. “We continue to do what we do and work within the means of what we have. We know that there’s going to be limited growth, but we will be focused on maintenance.”

Taking a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, the namesake of Minot’s zoo and a park, DesLauriers added, “We’re just going to do what we can with what we have where we are, so we’ll provide the best parks and facilities that we can within the funding mechanisms that we have.”

Olson said he was proud of the work done by the district in getting the word out about the election, with 75-80 presentations made in the community.

A half percent sales tax for the park district would have lifted the total sales tax in Minot, including state and county, to 8% and raised an estimated $6 million annually for the park district.

The park board had proposed using the revenue to pay the bonds on a proposed 30,000-square-foot turf facility with a suspended walking track, meeting rooms and storage space. Sales tax income also would have paid operating costs on the Hoeven and Corbett baseball complexes, soccer complex, Roosevelt Park Zoo and Maysa Arena.