"Tax Increase" -- A city council person mentions the possibility

The Dallas City Council's Quality of Life and Government Services Committee got a preview of parts of the city's upcoming budget today and didn't like what it heard. This was especially true when it was briefed on "Culture, Art & Recreation." It wasn't either the culture or the art that bothered the committee members, but the recreation part struck a nerve.

The way the budgeting process works these days is the city sets what it calls "the price of government," which means "here's how much money we're willing to spend on providing city services." Then the various departments submit "bids" on what services they would like to provide that coincide with objectives stated by the council. Then another group of city staffers looks at all the bids and ranks them by priority. All the bids are funded by priority listed until the price of government has been reached.

The Quality of Life and Government Services Committee was briefed today on a number of these services the staff recommends be funded as part of the upcoming budget. The briefing included a list of bids that "fell below the line," i.e., they were nice and the citizens would love 'em, but, gosh darnit, there just wasn't enough money available to pay for them all.

Thus recreational center hours are being cut from 55 hours to week to 40. The zoo would only be open five days a week instead of seven and closes the aquarium. The city's golf courses would be open six days a week and not seven. Something called the Bahama Beach water park may have to be closed. Some graffiti maintenance at various parks might have to be curtailed. Several committee members took exception to a lot of these proposals.

District 6 Council Member Steve Salazar was the first to dance around the subject of a tax increase. Although he never mentioned District 13 council member Mitchell Rasansky by name, he warned other committee members about the person "who has never voted for a city budget and never will" and how he will argue for actually reducing the tax rate.

He was followed by Ron Natinsky of District 12, the area of far North Dallas that could be hit hardest by a property tax increase, who said that while the city must look at operational efficiencies and perhaps different groupings of services, that the council must not rule out a tax increase. And he said those words: "tax increase."

So there it is. The subject of a tax increase is now on the table. The question is how much are citizens willing to pay for city services. Because the economy has resulted in a decrease in sales taxes, we may have to pay more in property taxes just to maintain our current level of services. We may even have to pay more to keep the cuts being more on a line of what we are willing to accept.

It's not good news, but at least there are those on the council not shying away from the realities of the situation.