What do you think of these potential revenue streams (list courtesy of the Journal Star) the city is considering to get more money for police officers and/or firefighters?
- 5% Utility Tax on water ($1.25 million per year)
- 2% Package Liquor tax ($700,000)
- 1% Amusement Tax increase ($392,000)
- 1% Hotel Tax increase ($301,850)
- 1% Property Tax Rate increase ($171,600)
Utility Tax
Can someone, in a reasonably small nutshell, advise me on how we keep losing money while we keep expanding in the retail sales area (i.e. growing north beyond any limits we could have ever imagined)? What are the main culprits? Police? Fire? Streets? Anything? The sales tax revenues should have bolstered us for many many years to come, and yet here we are, looking into other “revenue streams.”
Bleeeeeeeech.
How about a tax on rental properties-it will (and should) be passed on to the tenants who then will be paying for fire and police protection the same as everyone else. Just a small tax or “fee” to make the renters feel they are a part of the system.
Prego — Density, population. Even though land mass has more than doubled since the mid-60s, population has gone down, and population density has been cut in half. That means costs for public works (streets, sewers, infrastructure), police and fire go up, but fewer people are here to pay for it. To make matters worse, new developments are horribly inefficient. Take for example the fact that plowing snow in a cul-de-sacs takes six times as much effort as plowing through streets.
I know these two will be unpopular, but… How about taking the 2% HRA tax from the Civic Center and use that? Its kind of crude, but if a person was on life support for 20 years, the plug would have been pulled by now. 20 years is a long time for a “temporary” tax. Time to stand on their own two feet.
One of the least taxed things is food. What about a .5% tax on items in the grocery store?
Or how about re-distributing the “wealth” derived from our property taxes from District 150 to fire & police. Apparently they get too much as they can afford buying houses they don’t need and giving raises to assistant administrators that they questionably need.
If we are going to redistribute wealth from other taxing bodies, we should start with the park district. Their budget numbers are staggering, for parks and rec!!!
How ’bout this one… no new taxes. Look at each and EVERY department at EVERY level, and start rating its value from 1 to 10. Anything 5 or below, lop it off. Get the budget down to a more manageable level, come hell or high water. And, C.J., while your argument seems to hold up, I still say that all of the movement out north has also created a WEALTH of sales tax revenue that we didn’t have 20-30 years ago. Even though our population has gone down somewhat, we still get a LOT of buyers from Morton, Dunlap, Brimfield, etc., all the places where a lot of our population moved to. And those buyers bring our #1 mode of revenue- sales tax.
I maintain that there is simply a TON of wasteful spending… we’re just too busy to decipher it from the budget scramble.
I don’t understand why the City of Peoria needs to raise taxes. I think the City needs to focus on bringing more people into the city to support their over extended services. The more citizens Peoria has, the more tax revenue they will bring in. The way to attract new people is not to make it more expensive than it already is to live in Peoria. The solution to this is to lower property and sales taxes, and market Peoria as a nice place to live with everything you need close to home. Also, make it known that it is cheaper to live in Peoria. If it is cheaper to live in Peoria the people will come. Most people don’t care about theaters and civic centers when moving into a new home; they care about the taxes, the schools, the crime, and how far it is from work and the grocery store.
Prego — I don’t disagree that the development out north has created more sales tax revenue. In fact, the commercial development might pay for itself (i.e., break even with the additional infrastructure, maintenance, and public safety costs). But the new northern residential development most certainly does not. This is why I’m kind of attracted to the Land Value Taxation idea.
OnLooker is on-target. Peoria needs to LOWER the cost of living in Peoria, not increase it. You raise taxes again, more people will move out, fewer people will shop in Peoria (or go to movies, etc.), and you will end up with bigger shortfalls and calls for more taxes in a few years. BTW, you can lower the cost of police by lowering the crime rate. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. Rudy did it in NYC. And finally, by all means, get rid of the unnecessary spending, starting with the Gateway Building.
and all this on top of the garbage fee, which doesn’t fund garbage (who knows where that money goes). Taxation without representation. I am sure the council will stick it to us someplace and they’ll do it without any public input.
Many states require developers (of new subdivisions) to provide a cash payment as an impact fee or proffer to offset the cost of proving additional municipal services to the newly (or to be developed) area of town. The fee is set at the amount that it costs to provide the additional services including the cost of additional infrastructure (roads, sewers, police substations, fire stations, etc.). This ensures that new developments cover the cost of the capital expenditures necessary due to the expansion and the annual property taxes provide the additional on-going revenues for the services.
We’re not ensuring that the new developments cover their costs in that manner. While we may require them to put in the streets/sewer, that’s only a small component of the costs. There is no subsidization of the impact they have on the ongoing operating costs.
In deciding which tax to use, we must decide which activity we want less of in the city. Less restaurant patronage? Less hotel usage? Perhaps we want fewer retail sales or outlets. Or maybe we should punish people for using “too much” water, or going to the movies or the Symphony too much. Even though most liquor outlets have no crime problem, maybe we should punish them all for the few stores that do have a problem. Hey, we could do that for banks too!
One of the big reasons we are chronically out of money at City Hall is that we insist on punishing (and driving out) our productive tax base.
CJ is right – a land value tax, coupled with a reduction in all these other destructive taxes, would induce growth in the city. It has everywhere else it has been tried. Land value taxes do not punish anything – except lack of development.
why do we need more firefighters or cops. There are plenty as it is.