The Tombstone City Council was unable to put lingering tax allocation issues to bed after its meeting on Tuesday.

The council unanimously approved an agenda item to use a portion of the town’s bed tax to maintain highways around the city.

George Barnes, the Tombstone city clerk/manager, said during the meeting that the city would soon bear the brunt of decreasing funding from the state for highway maintenance.

"That's going to trickle down to us with certainty," he said.

County roads are maintained with money derived from the Highway User Revenue Fund (HURF). The fund is derived from a mixture of gas taxes and vehicle licensing registration fees.

In the executive budget for the fiscal year 2012, the state diverted $12.5 million in HURF allotments from cities and towns to the Department of Public Safety, which uses them to enforce traffic laws on state highways.

Tombstone received just north of $113,000 in HURF monies in fiscal year 2011, a pittance of the almost $343 million in total state appropriations. This was also the lowest amount in Cochise County and the 10th lowest in the state. In comparison, Sierra Vista received more than $3.1 million.

Tombstone’s HURF portion has also fallen by 21.8 percent, approximately $31,000, since fiscal year 2007.

The town doubled the bed tax, to 6 percent, earlier this year, a move that tied it with Tucson, Marana and Oro Valley for the highest rate in the state of Arizona.

Councilwoman Stacey Korbeck-Reeder voiced concern about making any decision related to the bed tax money now given that many businesses around town were displeased with the tax, since it places a disproportionate tax burden on the hospitality industry. Korbeck-Reeder said she has received letters from businesses threatening a class-action lawsuit against the town.

"Is this something we're going to spend right now on when we know we have people in the city who are aggrieved against it?" Korbeck-Reeder asked.

Barnes deflected criticism, and said the town has the final say in the levying and allocation of the bed tax.

"The city council can by ordinance allocate that money as it chooses," Barnes said.

Barnes did say that the issue could be revisited at a later date but was unrelated to the debate at that time.

"The original reason for doing this was budgetary. It doesn't upend this physical budget," Barnes said.