A subdued, low-turnout special election ended Tuesday with a message delivered to Santa Fe County loud and clear: The gross receipts tax rate should go no higher.
Unofficial numbers showed that 70 percent of county voters who cast ballots shot down a proposed one-sixteenth-cent increase to the county gross receipts tax rate, a fractional hike that would have added 6.25 cents in tax on every $100 spent for most goods and services in Santa Fe and the rest of the county.
“It’s high enough,” Melissa Sanchez, a city resident who works in the public school system, said of the tax rate, which already is scheduled to climb by an eighth of a cent Jan. 1. “For some of us, that means less food on the table.”