The mayor’s apparent decision to toss the city’s last $10 million of cash at the tax rate in order to lower it by a fraction is bad business for the mayor, bad business for the city, and shows how little the city can do to stop taxes from rising, unless…the city cuts its spending.
The mayor and Chief Financial Officer Eric Demas have gone from appearing to know what they are doing with the city’s nite monetary resources, to lamenting, as the mayor did two weeks ago, that the city is facing difficult times.
Hoe can this be? How do we reverse this situation?
One of the first orders of business the mayor should indulge in during the coming week is to rescind his pledge to lower taxes by tossing precious cash at the city’s tax bill.
First of all, $10 million is not even a drop in the bucket to fixing the rising tax rate. The sum total of such an exercise is to leave the city without cash – and as all of us in our own lives understand, cash is king. In addition, the city will be left without cash and the tax rate will be unaffected.
The city budget is too bloated and is rising too fast for a meaningful tax decrease with $10 million thrown at it.
The only way to achieve a tax decrease is to spend less money and at the same time, to bank the extra money coming in from the casino.
Any other talk about mitigating taxes or bringing taxes down are doomed to failure.
Keep the cash you have, Mr. Mayor.
The city can’t operate without cash in the treasury.
Keep the cash and cut spending.
Lowering taxes by $20 for an average city taxpayer is meaningless – just ask the taxpayers!