About Us

The Budget - a continuing long-term deficit

    Although we've balanced our operating budget, we still face a huge
problem. Because our sale tax and hotel tax revenues have fallen to
decade-ago levels, we are massively underfunding our infrastructure.
That means that over the next 10 years, our streets, parks, libraries -
nearly all the physical aspects of the city - cannot be maintained as they
should.
   We need to reinvest $10 million every year in our infrastructure just to
keep it from deteriorating. But because of large drops in revenue, we are
millions short every year in supporting our city.
   Our sales tax and our hotel tax revenues have fallen to mid-1990's
evels in constant dollars. Over the past several years, we have cut our
annual expenses and headcount significantly. But even as we've cut staff,
wage and benefits pressures push our total labor costs higher. While
there is still more we can do in reductions, this cannot take care of our
massive infrastructure shortfall.
   To take care of our minimum infrastructure needs, we must find ways to
increase our revenue base.

Increasing our sales tax and hotel tax bases through a 3 year revenue
enhancement plan is the only way to take care of our infrastructure
without cutting services or raising rates and fees to our own citizens.