Budget Cuts or Recall: A Simple Choice for the City Council

The grassroots effort to get people to the Tucson City Council public budget hearing on April 28 was a huge success by any standard. With more than 1000 showing up overall, 500 squeezing into the meeting chambers, and 120 signing up to speak, the City Council was bored to tears for more than five hours as 95% of the people spoke against tax increases and in favor of budget cuts.

While nobody can deny that taxes are necessary for the basic functioning of a government, the City Council has argued that $17 million should be raised in order to keep non-essential services.

Here are the main taxes that it intends to raise:

•A 2 percent tax on residential rental real estate - $12 million.

• Raising residential trash and recycling fees by 4 percent - $986,000.

• A 25 percent increase in most bus fares - $1.8 million, with economy and express fares exempted. The basic fare would go from $1 to $1.25.

• Doubling the bed tax levied on hotels to $2 a night - $1.8 million.

• Utility tax increases on water, power and cable - $5 million.

What do we get by raising over $17 million in regressive taxes, essentially hurting those who need to keep their money the most? Absolutely nothing. No new services. All it does it prevent the City Council from having to make tough budget cuts.

Below are the cuts that the City Council won’t have to make by raising our taxes:

• The amount city employees will concede in benefit reductions or increased costs was pegged at $5.7 million, reduced from $10 million.

• Grants to social service agencies and charities will be reduced by $1 million instead of $4 million.

• The amount going to service pensions for city employees and elected officials increased by $2 million to match actuarial requirements.

• City savings will rise by $1.5 million to 4 percent of its discretionary spending. Officials said earlier that amounts under 5 percent could negatively affect the city’s financial ratings. The council’s goal is 10 percent.

The public outcry on April 28 was a significant turning point in local Tucson politics. Rarely, if ever, has the City Council had to deal with so many people who weren’t there to ask for other peoples’ money. You could smell the fear in the room — their fear. And the smell only got stronger every time someone stepped up to the podium to utter those magic words: recall.

Even the Arizona Daily Star’s editorial board is instructing the City Council to stop gorging and lose weight.

The Tucson City Council must apply a big red pen to the city’s proposed $1.3 billion budget for fiscal 2010.

City Manager Mike Letcher sent the mayor and City Council a budget loaded with the pet projects of the council members.

Letcher’s budget should force the council to make tough choices, set priorities and define the city’s core services. It must focus on necessities and cut the slightest “extra.”

Letcher said during an editorial board meeting last week that he does not expect the budget to be adopted on June 9 in its present form.

“If the council directs me to cut, I will cut,” Letcher said.

The council should give Letcher that mandate with specific policy guidance on where and how to cut.

Letcher must have a much better political nose than the council. He has put the ball back in their court, something that they have tried to avoid this whole time. The decision is now up to them to make the tough decisions or face the repercussions. If they continue to do wrong to the people of Tucson, we will continue to take notice and make ourselves heard.

It’s up to us to be involved and make our government work for us and not the other way around. Hopefully the City Council is not inept and corrupt enough to ignore what their employers want. If they do, then maybe a recall isn’t such a bad idea.