Half-A-Billion Bucks In More Debt? Mesa Voters Get The Final Say On Massive Bond & Tax Proposals > VOTE NO!

Mesa Voters Get The Final Say On Massive Bond & Tax Proposals > VOTE NO!

That's right > Say NO across the board when you vote. 
The combined GIGANTIC size - almost half a billion dollars - of the bond debt requests and the sheer number of money-related ballot questions on this November 6 General Election are up to voters here in Mesa to make the final say. There's a lot more at stake on the State level with other Proposals to deal with that will affect and impact our futures, but let's keep it hyper-local here in this post right now.
Keep in mind that except for the separate massive unjustified $300M - that is $300,000,000 - budget  OVERRIDE proposal for a failing Mesa public education system, other issues have been passed by the Mesa City Council to get voted on. 

They tried to sting us all two years ago with that privately financed bogus $500,000 ASU public relations campaign that no one got tricked by - it blew up in their faces when voters simply said NO. Played for fools once...Never again!
This time around they've had two years to 're-package' their underhanded bag-of-tricks into a Grab-Bag-of-Goodies they hope can trick everyone all over again.
How? By slow-jamming (and at the same time fast-tracking) a number of proposals through the Mesa City Council.

This year it was not unanimous - it was contentious.
_________________________________________________________________________
Blogger Note: The issues and actions that bring the bond requests and budget to the 2018 November 6 General Election have been written about on this site multiple times 
_________________________________________________________________________ 

Propositions have all been approved to get on the November 6 General Election Ballot by the Mesa City Council - they can hit up your wallets with increases in city-wide sales-and-use taxes, hikes in fees/charges for utilities consumption, and other more questionable proposals that will increase public debt. You can Vote NO ACROSS THE BOARD    
Mesa voters got that when we got smarter in 2016 two years ago - NOW that early voting has started today for the Nov 6 General Election you can vote no on every trick in that Grab-Bag-of-Goodies:

NO to the $300,000,000 Budget Over-Ride

NO to Question 1 Home Rule 

< Let's start at what is QUESTION 1 on the November Ballot HOME RULE , which Mesa voters have consistently supported, allows cities to spend whatever revenues they collect, even if those expenses exceed state-mandated budget caps that were imposed almost 40 years ago.
While it might sound really good "Home" Rule, like the way so many other questions have been concocted on the ballot, it throws the budget out-of-balance hitting Mesa Taxpayers in the wallet  
Voters in other cities have recently clearly voted NO on increasing more millions in public debt.

Approving Home Rule is like writing a blank check - would you do that again??   NO   NO   NO

Blogger Note: If we say NO to Home Rule, this time around the city can still collect money but they can't spend it.
________________________________________________ 

Included after some excerpts from a previous post are some data and facts and an opinion from Mesa City Council member Jeremy Whittaker whose goals are simple . . .

"they are to provide transparency to the finances of our city for the purpose of protecting the assets that belong to the residents before they are entirely depleted due to a massive spending spree with no plan to pay for anything. It’s time to get our spending under control. In addition, my hope is that we can start creating policies that favor the middle class and the poor in our community. This requires us to live within our means and get back to providing core municipal services to our residents.

It is important to note that financial crisis situations do not occur overnight. They take years to evolve usually with those at the helm ignorant in what it is they’re creating."

_________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Mayor John Giles:
"We are going to exhaust our voters' willingness to pay for some of these things" he said before the council pared back some of the requests.
 "We can't do everything . . "  Now why would we trust John Giles on anything???
An across-the-board no vote would include rejection of the so-called home-rule provision, represented on the ballot this year by Question 1.

 

Approving Home Rule is like writing a blank check - would you do that  again? VOTE NO

Here's another quote from  Jivin' Mayor John Giles -
< The Great Explainer?
"Giles said he occasionally faces that same skepticism, but it tends to evaporate once he lays out the case for the spending measures. . . " ???????
The killer quote  that's more true than what he might realize:
“It looks like there’s more on the ballot than there is,” Giles said . . .

Right!  Another trick to play residents and taxpayers for fools

________________________________________________________________________

Here's a detailed run-down from District 2 Mesa City Council member Jeremy Whittaker on that whopping half-a-billion-bucks $500,000,000  of new debt.

Source: http://www.jeremywhittaker.com

• Local control of the budget vs. spending caps from the state (Question 1)
• Raising the sales tax 14% (Question 2)
• $85 million dollars to build a police/fire joint station in northeast Mesa (Question 3)
• $111 million dollars for parks and culture. Including ASU park downtown, a permanent ice skating rink, and massive soccer fields in northeast Mesa. (Question 4)
• Modifying the City Charter to allow us to spend $100 million on a sports complex in northeast Mesa. (Question 5)
• Increase the lodging tax by 20% (Question 6)

________________________________________________________________________

First: Read what Jeremy Whittaker has to say about DECEIT

"It is important to realize that when governments request to spend more money and voters must approve the spending they put plenty of thought in how they phrase the ballot measures as much as possible to deceive the voters into voting “yes”. To this extent, some ballot measures are outright deceitful or arguably outright lies. In our instances, I take issue with multiple items on our ballot this year.
1. The first issue is always invoking the words “public safety” as a scare tactic.
You may recall the video last year where they tried to push the sales tax increase to pay for more public safety workers and the ASU building downtown, they showed an immigrant killing a Circle K employee to justify the tax hike. This scare tactic is a way to get voters to approve whatever you put in front of them with the belief that if they do not approve it then police and fire services will be slashed and causing massive increases in crime and response times for services.
All the meanwhile money is siphoned off the books to pet projects that never make it on to the ballot. Then when they do and you vote against them alternatives methods are used to finance them.
2. The second item  I take issue with on this ballot is the calculation of the tax increases. To determine how much your taxes are increasing the formula is simple. You take the difference of the new tax rate (2%) from the existing one (1.75%). You then divide this number(.25%) by the original tax rate and multiply by 100.  More details can be found on Google for calculating the percentage of increases – https://goo.gl/5RDDSE
In our example on the ballot this year, our existing sales tax rate is 1.75% the new tax rate being proposed is 2%. This is a difference of .25%. If you divide this number by the original tax rate you get .142, multiply this by 100 and you arrive at 14.2% of a sales tax increase.  If someone indicates to you that the sales tax rate is only increasing by .25% one of two things is happening, they either don’t understand the math behind calculating percentages of increases or they are intentionally disguising the actual increase to deceive you. The .25% number disguises the true severity of the problem. It seems small on the surface when the real increase is significantly larger. Once you realize how massive of a tax increase this is you have to start analyzing how to fix the problems causing it rather than kicking the can down the road.
In addition to the sales tax increase is the lodging tax increase. 
It currently sits at 5% and is being proposed to go to 6%. I won’t show the math here, rather you can use the formula above to determine this is another massive 20% increase.
The third item that is an issue with our ballot this year is the deceit in which the increase sales tax funds can be spent.
Yes, it is true that this new sales tax increase (Question 2) can only go to public safety based on the wording. However, money is fungible, meaning, this frees up the money from the general fund that can then be spent on anything without any restriction. In fact, this is exactly how items are funneled through the city that you don’t want to pay for.
Taxes are raised on the items that are “polled” and that you will support which frees up other money to pay for pet projects.
This is not how a government should function.

_________________________________________________________________________

Let's unpack some more

(Blogger Note: The interest paid on the City's Bond Debt Service is determined by its rating)

Bond rating agencies

"One item to pay close attention to in order to track our financial issues facing the city are the bond rating reports which are done by Moody’s and S&P, two credit rating agencies. I’m honestly not sure why Fitch, the third credit rating agency, was excluded. There are some items of concern within these reports. These items touch on some of my concerns but not all. It is important to understand bond rating agencies are only concerned about investors and borrows defaulting on debt.  Meaning they do not analyze the social issues or quality of life issues which must also be taken into consideration. They merely want to assure the lenders that they will receive their payments and principle back. Here are some excerpts from the reports.

• “Reserve levels remain somewhat below national medians”
• “Pension liabilities and costs, already elevated, will continue to grow without additional funding”
• “Economic contraction resulting in significant revenue declines and inability to bring about fiscal balance”
• “Demonstrated unwillingness to make budgetary adjustments as necessary to maintain reserves”

__________________________________________________________

Running out of money

Looking at the chart below you can see the city’s unrestricted net position or unrestricted assets minus liabilities is almost negative half a billion dollars.  This is the equivalent of an individual’s net worth.

If this were a corporation it would be bankrupt.

The city has a few levers we can pull when we start to run out of money.
It should be noted and of significant importance that we are doing every single one of these items outlined below:
This is an indication of an unsustainable position. 
They are as follows:

• Increase the sales tax
• Increase debt through sales-tax backed bonds or excise tax bonds
• Increase property tax bonds
• Amortize debt over a longer period to stop the squeeze
• Increase utility rates
• Spend money allocated for capital replacement and improvements for operating expenses (disguising the severity of the issue)
• Pray that the economy does well and we will see an increase in state shared sales tax revenue

It should be noted and of significant importance that we are doing every single one of these items outlined above.
This is an indication of an unsustainable position. 
Based on this if you cannot afford to pay your bills in an operating year you should not be spending on items that are discretionary in nature or unnecessary. The math is simple if you make $50k/year and your bills add up to $60k/year you should be looking for ways to cut $10k/year out of your budget.
You cannot run deficits in perpetuity you will eventually run out of money when your savings are depleted. Currently,
Mesa does not have a balanced budget (revenue sources minus uses).
To be more specific we are only able to balance our budget because we transfer dollars from our reserve, or savings account each year.
Hence the reason why we must pull all the levers outlined above.

City governments do not get to enjoy “exorbitant privilege” like the US government in their budgets deficits. This comes from our inability to print money and inflate our way out of debt. So our situation will need to be addressed sooner.
In the above example, and simplified, for every year that you spend $60k while making $50k you must have future years in which you only spend $40k to make up for this deficit spending
_______________________________________________________________

Lack of savings

In times of economic prosperity, like what we’re going through today, organizations, corporations, and individuals should be saving for future downturns in the economy.

Instead, we’ve accelerated our spending and are estimated to deplete our reserves to their lowest allowable levels 8-10% by fiscal year 22/23.

Lurking massive public safety pension problems

The single biggest issue facing our city financially is the bankrupt PSPRS fund.

This is destroying our city financially.

If you look at the chart below it is clear we are headed for a disaster. Even more concerning is the lack of an attempt to pay down this debt.

A percentage of the revenues from Question 2 should have been allocated to addressing this problem.

Instead, the Council decided to change the amortization period from 20 to 30 years, simply kicking the can down the road.

These funds sit at dangerously unfunded levels that are not prepared for the next recession, 44.26% for police and 46.7% for fire personnel. 

________________________________________________________________________________

Red Mountain Soccer Complex

The reasons outlined above are why I opposed the ASU complex downtown and other discretionary spending.

So is now the time to be spending more money on a bunch of new taxes, a park that includes a year-round seasonal  ice skating rink downtown, and massive soccer complex which will only positively impact one of the wealthiest parts of northeast Mesa? 

I say no, however, I’ve outlined my arguments above and will respect your opinion if we disagree. The only question I hope you would ask before voting for all these new taxes, “How and who will pay for all of this?“.

I referenced multiple items throughout this article. Most of the data was derived from the City of Mesa’s executive budget report or the comprehensive annual financial report.