Facebook | Sal DiCiccio: Property taxes are about to go up in Phoenix

News Release

Office of Councilman Sal DiCiccio, District 6
602-262-7491
Council.district.6@phoenix

.gov

Property taxes in Phoenix are about to go up. The City Council on May 25 will consider allowing the rate taxpayers pay to rise over the next 20 years.

This comes on top of the city, in the past for months:

* Imposing a new food tax (up $50 million per year)
* Increasing water rates ($30 million per year; a 40% increase over 5 years)
* Increasing sewer rates ($3 million this year)
* Increasing fees on small business

And now the City of Phoenix wants to raise property tax rates, even though property values have gone down.

All of these fees and taxes were imposed to afford an average cost of $100,000 per city employee – that’s for all 14,000 employees. This could all be fixed if Phoenix simply would restructure operations. My office has asked Phoenix to address the high cost of labor at City Hall. Instead, the city has chosen the easy route of raising taxes and fees on the public, all of which I have opposed.

At 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Phoenix will consider raising the property tax rate under the guise of a “floating rate.” That means taxes will “float” up.

Phoenix imposes property taxes as a percentage to a property's assessed valuations. When property values were climbing, Phoenix kept it rate constant, which mean it took more dollars from every property every year as their values increased. Now that values have dropped, Phoenix wants to tax homeowners at an even higher rate and take a higher percentage of the equity homeowners still might have in the homes.

This is being done because city budgeters failed to account sufficiently for declining property values and the city now lacks the revenue to repay bonds. Phoenix must solve this problem internally by making structural changes and not look to shift the responsibility onto taxpayers.

Instead of hitting taxpayers yet one more time, I believe the city needs to address its own bloated labor cost bubble and initiate structural changes such as managed competition to bring its expenses down. Homeowners and taxpayers are hurting in this economy, and the city of Phoenix is just making the burden heavier by piling on more and more taxes and fees. That's not the way to lead Phoenix out of this recession.

Respectfully,

Sal DiCiccio
Phoenix councilman: Ahwatukee, Arcadia, Biltmore and North Phoenix
200 W. Washington St. 11th Floor
Phoenix, AZ 85003
602-262-7491
council.district.6@phoenix.gov