So, City Council has set a zero property tax rate increase in this hotly contested election year, following last year’s gargantuan 5.7 cent increase.
Kindly, someone, please explain why, by some magical coincidence, those pressing needs which drive huge tax increases suddenly evaporate every election year? Why, this year, are there no pressing needs warranting a tax hike when at the hearing a full house of our emergency personnel pointed out their pay lags behind the rest of the metropolitan area’s and we’re losing personnel to other municipalities? And our profligate school board, crying a river of critical unmet needs totalling hundreds of millions, has suddenly decided they can wait?
Or are they just saving up their wish list of alleged “needs” for next year when they won’t have to face the voters in a pending election?
Such sleight-of-hand fiscal finagling results in lavish wishlists being passed off as “needs,” while real needs, such as paying our emergency personnel properly, are passed over. Is timing more politically pressing than any actual substance of any potential expenditure?
Dino Drudi
Alexandria