Pima County Tentative Budget Meeting ---Mon. May 20 @ 9:00 AM

The following is a message from Tom Jenney--Arizona Federation Of Taxpayers

ARIZONA FEDERATION OF TAXPAYERS

16 May 2008

Dear Pima County Taxpayer:

This coming Tuesday, May 20^th, members of the Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity and the Pima Association of Taxpayers will attend the 9:00 a.m. meeting of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, which will feature a hearing regarding the County’s Tentative Budget for 2008. The County budget usually determines how much the Supervisors will choose to levy in property taxes.

AFP Arizona and the PAT strongly encourage all members to attend the meeting (though we understand that many of our over-taxed activists are normally working at that hour!), which will be held on the first floor of the County Admin building at 130 W. Congress Street downtown. If you plan to attend, please reply to this email.

The Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity recently released its 2008 Tax and Spending Pledge for local governments, and invited all city council members, county supervisors, and candidates to sign on as Friends of the Taxpayer.

To pledge to be a Friend of the Taxpayer, a supervisor or candidate must promise not to vote for any FY 2009 budget that is greater than the FY 2008 budget, not vote for any increase in total property tax LEVIES (note: we did not say “rate”), and not vote to increase any sales taxes or impact fees, even by means of voter referenda.

In 2007, Supervisors Sharon Bronson, Richard Elias, and Ramon Valadez scored as Champions of Big Government on AFP Arizona’s Local Government Scorecard (link below), because they: 1) voted to increase the county budget by 15.8 percent—more than twice the rate of growth of Pima County’s private economy during years of strong economic growth; 2) voted to increase county property tax levies by almost 10 percent; and, 3) attempted to impose a county sales tax.

Supervisor Ray Carroll scored as a Champion of the Taxpayer and won AFP Arizona’s 2007 Local Hero Award for voting against the budget and property tax increases, and for single-handedly stopping the imposition of a county sales tax increase. Supervisor Ann Day scored as a Friend of the Taxpayer for voting against the budget and property tax increases.

So far, Pima County’s FY2009 budget looks relatively modest, with projected spending ($1.46 billion) lower than that of FY2008 ($1.48 billion). But the County plans to increase property tax levies by 4.3 percent, which is still too high for a recession year, and after several years when home and business owners have been heavily over-taxed:

http://www.pima.gov/finance/PDFs/Budget/RecBdgt/2008-2009/00cbdgtschl.pdf

Supervisors Carroll and Day have submitted an alternative budget that does not include an increase in property tax levies:

http://www.pima.gov/bos/rcarroll/PDFs/th-budget.proposal.CarrollDay.pdf

AFP Arizona is asking Pima County taxpayer activists to contact their supervisors (and all supervisor candidates) and encourage them to print out pledge forms, sign them, and mail them in to the AFP Arizona office (Americans for Prosperity, One East Camelback Road, Suite 550, Phoenix, AZ 85012). Supervisors and candidates can also give those pledges to Tom Jenney at the May 20^th meeting.

For printable pledge forms, Board members can visit this page:

http://www.americansforprosperity.org/includes/filemanager/files/az/azlocalgovtpledge2008.pdf

Emails for the Pima County Supervisors can be found here:

http://www.pima.gov/bos/bos1.html

Link to AFP Arizona’s 2007 Local Government Scorecard:

http://www.americansforprosperity.org/includes/filemanager/files/az/local_govt_scorecard_2007.pdf

Thank you so much for helping to control the growth of taxes and spending in Pima County!

For Liberty,

--Tom

Tom Jenney

Arizona Director

Americans for Prosperity

www.aztaxpayers.org

tjenney@afphq.org

(602) 478-0146

And if you’ve made it this far…

Please join Americans for Prosperity and support your grassroots taxpayer watchdog.

The Arizona Federation of Taxpayers has served the hard-working people of our state since 1980. Now that we have teamed up with Americans for Prosperity, we are fighting the Big Spenders at all levels of government—local, state, and national.

For $10 a year, you can take a stand for freedom and limited government—and save yourself hundreds of dollars a year in taxes. Use the link below to JOIN NOW!

http://www.americansforprosperity.org/index.php?page=donate