City Council took the final step to place a 1.5 percent earned income tax on the May 7 ballot by unanimously passing a resolution to put the matter before voters.

“We have cut the budget and departments over the past two years,” Mayor Vicki Giambrone said Tuesday. “This is how (the city) is going to move forward.”

The city is funded through property taxes and various state funds. During the past several years, those state funds have drastically been cut.

Because of the cuts, the city has a backlog of $200 million in infrastructure projects, according to city documents. The city projects $10.2 million in revenue from the proposed tax in 2014, rising to $18.7 million in 2020.

Attempts to pass an income tax during the past two decades have failed.

The proposed 7-year tax would exempt Social Security and pension benefits, interest and dividends, military pay and capital gains to protect older residents living on fixed incomes. The city also would offer full credit to residents paying income tax in other localities.

If passed, the tax proposal contains language that would let lapse three current property taxes — a 1.0 mill street levy this year, a 3.7 mill police levy in 2014 and a 2.6 mill street levy in 2016. Twenty percent of the proposed income tax receipts would go to capital improvements.

Details of the proposal and an income tax calculator are available on the city’s website, http://ci.beavercreek.oh.us.

“This is in everyone’s best interests,” council member Brian Jarvis said of the proposed tax.