Proposals to purchase a couple of brand new vehicles for Building and Neighborhood Services and Meter Services and to increase local sales taxes are on the agenda for tomorrow's city council meeting.
While both the vehicles getting replaced are quite old ( 1986 in the case of Meter Services and 1996 in the case of Building and Neighborhood services), I still have to wonder about buying brand new vehicles. Given that the average new car drops 11% in value almost as soon as you purchase it, and that the city is still rather short on money, as evidenced by the taxes proposed later on the agenda, why not buy vehicles a few years older and save the money?
Also, tomorrow the council will vote on raising the city sales tax by 1/4% to 8.5% and the hotel tax by 1% to 9%, still cheap compared to the 14% I have seen in other locales. Raising the hotel tax will generate an estimated additional $75,00 per year, while the sales tax would put an additional $1.04 million per year into city coffers.
The rationale for the increase is that due to the recession, local sales have not generated the expected and budgeted for tax revenues for the city. Since I would be willing to bet these go through, I rather like the Chamber of Commerce's proposal of a sunset clause in the ordinance, forcing the council to re-enact the tax 2-3 years down the road. If the economy picks up, the extra money would no longer be needed to support the budget and, if it is, the council should be able to justify it again. Without some sort of end date, all ordinances such as this, enacted to deal with a particular problem tend to stay around while the problem they were enacted to deal with does not.
While both the vehicles getting replaced are quite old ( 1986 in the case of Meter Services and 1996 in the case of Building and Neighborhood services), I still have to wonder about buying brand new vehicles. Given that the average new car drops 11% in value almost as soon as you purchase it, and that the city is still rather short on money, as evidenced by the taxes proposed later on the agenda, why not buy vehicles a few years older and save the money?
Also, tomorrow the council will vote on raising the city sales tax by 1/4% to 8.5% and the hotel tax by 1% to 9%, still cheap compared to the 14% I have seen in other locales. Raising the hotel tax will generate an estimated additional $75,00 per year, while the sales tax would put an additional $1.04 million per year into city coffers.
The rationale for the increase is that due to the recession, local sales have not generated the expected and budgeted for tax revenues for the city. Since I would be willing to bet these go through, I rather like the Chamber of Commerce's proposal of a sunset clause in the ordinance, forcing the council to re-enact the tax 2-3 years down the road. If the economy picks up, the extra money would no longer be needed to support the budget and, if it is, the council should be able to justify it again. Without some sort of end date, all ordinances such as this, enacted to deal with a particular problem tend to stay around while the problem they were enacted to deal with does not.
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