Today’s Arizona Daily Star front page highlights the plight of the Tucson taxpayer and the uphill battle against “big government”. The articles overall assessment of City spending is that the city budget has grown more than double the inflation rate and nearly 5 times faster than the population. We all need to take a few minutes and read this article as it reflects the situation of all cities and counties as well as the State of Arizona. Every department within the scope of the City’s budget shows dramatic year over year increases which only demonstrates the desire of each department head to succumb to the “Parkinson’s Law” syndrome . The article goes on and graphically paints a picture of how the City of Tucson’s tax and spending appetite has far outpaced the city’s growth over the past 10 years.
One wonders just how much of the Prop 100 sales tax will go to offset some of these costs since one-third of Prop 100 funds are ostensibly ear marked for be used for health and human services and public safety. Since most state funds are apportioned to counties and states does that mean they will flow down to fund these voluminous expense? We also need to be concerned with the City Manager's recent proposal to raise the sales tax by 1/2¢ which if done will raise our city sales tax on purchases within the City limits to 10%. And yes, that is 10% of your after tax earned income, not your take home pay. We don’t think of it that way do we? No, because the proponents of Prop 100 use gross earnings in their examples in order to minimize the impact.
So now maybe it’s time to tell the City of Tucson, “no mas, no mas” and do the same to Prop 100, “no mas, no mas”.
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