Yes, a $40 tax increase isn’t much, but you can only keep going back to the well so many times. If things don’t turn around economically pretty soon, we will eat up that reserve fund and you might actually have to go back to the taxpayers to fund essential services. And then people are not going to be so willing to fork it out, since you just asked them for money a few years ago for some shiny toys.

Who’s confident the stock market is going back to 2007 highs any time soon? In Peggy Merriss’ letter that she sent with the budget, she says the city had to contribute 9% to the employees’ retirement fund, instead of the previous 8 %. That looks small, but it’s a 12.5% increase. If the stock market stays bad, or gets worse, won’t we taxpayers have to make up the difference in the pension fund?

Why does the budget letter say we’re not giving raises to city employees, but we are giving them an extra week of salary? Isn’t that a raise, even if it’s only 1.93%? Are folks who work for other governments or private industry getting raises like that?

And didn’t we use $400K of our 6 mil reserve fund last year, and $600K this year? Or was it the reverse? I guess I’m just worried that the staff is being way too optimistic about the economic situation for the next 5 or so years, maybe longer.

Adding two-tenths of a mill to your tax bill, averaging about $40, sounds innocent enough, but we need to consider that with all the other increases that are looming or have occurred. What about the two real property exemptions of $8K that we lost this year? Again, it’s all small stuff–for now. I really hope the commission will look hard at all this.

I think it will be a tough sell for Peggy and the Commission to call for a tax increase given the continuing economic climate and uncertainty, but we’ll see. She has a lot of power around City Hall and usually gets what she wants and only rarely to the Commissioners push back.