Fourteen Percent Tax Increase?
If you read the newspaper, or if you just got your property tax notice in the mail, or if you are one of the many protesters with whom I dialogued during the Steel Days parade, then you already know that the City Council is considering a tax increase in order to balance the 2009 budget.
(It can be difficult to dialogue while traversing a parade route; one hopes in these situations that a simple thumbs down is enough to convey meaning.)
Last Friday, Mayor Thompson's annual letter to taxpayers made my neighbor wrinkle his nose -- "sugar-coating," he called it. (Read the text of the letter below.) Myself, I feel the letter painted an honest and open picture of the budget and its challenges. Among other things, Mayor Thompson explained that the current proposal is for a 14 percent increase, not the 50 percent of earlier reports, and that the chief causes are slow revenues and rising oil prices.
Paring down the increase meant deferring many significant needs, including an enforcement officer and additional office space at the public works building. The current proposal will raise taxes on the average home (valued at $240,000) by $41.44 per year or $3.45 per month, and feels like bare bones, even by my tight-fisted standards.
Still, I'm not voting for it.
I could have voted for an increase of three or four percent. Regular, small increases are necessary if American Fork is to keep pace with inflation. (Click here for Local Commentary's discussion of how Truth in Taxation undermines the property tax's built-in inflationary factor.) I might even have gone as far as eight percent, given that there was no such increase in last year's budget.
But 14 percent is too rich for my blood.
We residents already voted for a significant increase to the 2009 budget when we approved the water bond back in 2006. 2009 is the year our water bills will double. We don't need to swallow two increases in the same year, not when gas and grocery prices have cinched household budgets tighter than Aunt Tillie's corset.
In time of need, doing without is the first and most basic financial tool. If we can't trust our City to muster this basic skill at this time, how can we trust it later to employ the higher financial skills?
(It can be difficult to dialogue while traversing a parade route; one hopes in these situations that a simple thumbs down is enough to convey meaning.)
Last Friday, Mayor Thompson's annual letter to taxpayers made my neighbor wrinkle his nose -- "sugar-coating," he called it. (Read the text of the letter below.) Myself, I feel the letter painted an honest and open picture of the budget and its challenges. Among other things, Mayor Thompson explained that the current proposal is for a 14 percent increase, not the 50 percent of earlier reports, and that the chief causes are slow revenues and rising oil prices.
Paring down the increase meant deferring many significant needs, including an enforcement officer and additional office space at the public works building. The current proposal will raise taxes on the average home (valued at $240,000) by $41.44 per year or $3.45 per month, and feels like bare bones, even by my tight-fisted standards.
Still, I'm not voting for it.
I could have voted for an increase of three or four percent. Regular, small increases are necessary if American Fork is to keep pace with inflation. (Click here for Local Commentary's discussion of how Truth in Taxation undermines the property tax's built-in inflationary factor.) I might even have gone as far as eight percent, given that there was no such increase in last year's budget.
But 14 percent is too rich for my blood.
We residents already voted for a significant increase to the 2009 budget when we approved the water bond back in 2006. 2009 is the year our water bills will double. We don't need to swallow two increases in the same year, not when gas and grocery prices have cinched household budgets tighter than Aunt Tillie's corset.
In time of need, doing without is the first and most basic financial tool. If we can't trust our City to muster this basic skill at this time, how can we trust it later to employ the higher financial skills?
posted by Heidi Rodeback at 10:13 PM
2 Comments:
Thank you for being mindful of every citizen's budget and for bringing some fiscal sense to our already overextended city. We agree that it is more prudent to do without in times such as these. Another burr in our side is that trail proposal in the bond. We would think that is more of a want than a need.
Thanks for planning to vote no to the tax increase. Please help the city learn to stay lean and cut city services (especially non-essential ones). If building permits are down, then maybe some building permit personnel could be let go. Thanks for your service to the city.
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