Mesa City Council Directs City Attorney To Start Working On A Lawsuit Challenge to Proposition 126.

This post today is a follow-up to an earlier post on this blog about an Executive Session held behind closed-doors on Monday 10 December 2018.
There's a somewhat spotty report yesterday evening by Mariana Dale on KJZZ who can't even seem to spell the word counsel correctly.

Considering the flimsy and egregious excuse neatly-packaged to convince Mesa voters in the November 2018 to approve a tax increase "for Public Safety" when crime rates are statistically down was bogus to start with.

The scant margin to endorse Home Rule squeaked by; it's no wonder that Mesa City officials are upset their local strategies for more taxes are jeopardized when statewide Arizona voters approved Prop 126 by 64.9%, stating in a press release that "Not being able to collect the Public Safety Tax in its entirety would mean there would be fewer firefighters and police officers serving our citizens . . .  Proposition 126 creates multiple issues and ambiguities that endanger the ability of the City of Mesa to collect and retain the Public Safety sales tax."
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Blogger Note: The use of the emotionally-tinged word endanger in the statement made by Steven Wright in the City of Mesa's Public Information and Communications Office.

In addition - omitted from KJZZ's reporting - are the number of notice of claims or pending lawsuit litigation seeking settlement damages approaching $100M for office-involved killings or incidents of brutality. . . have you noticed the 2.37% surcharge when you pay city utility bills using electronic payment?

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According to this report on KJZZ

Mesa Considers Lawsuit Against Ban On Service Taxes

By Mariana Dale

Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 - 4:43pm

Updated: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 - 5:07pm

The City of Mesa plans to challenge the legality of a ballot measure that prohibits new or increased taxes on services.
The City Council voted unanimously Monday to “authorize the city’s legal council [ SP error] counsel to file a lawsuit on behalf of the City of Mesa to challenge the legality and the applicability of Proposition 126.”
The City of Mesa issued a statement in response to KJZZ's request for an interview saying "Proposition 126 creates multiple issues and ambiguities that endanger the ability of the City of Mesa to collect and retain the Public Safety sales tax."
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10 December 2018

Will the City of Mesa Defy The Will of Statewide Arizona Voters?

Source: Tim Mello on MesaZona

The Mesa City Council is holding an EXECUTIVE SESSION tonight to discuss litigation.
Arizona Proposition 126, the Prohibit New or Increased Taxes on Services Initiative, was on the ballot in Arizona as an initiated constitutional amendment on November 6, 2018.^[1]



 The measure was APPROVED by 64.9%.

The No on Proposition 126 Committee led the campaign in opposition to Proposition 126.^[10] Sen. Steve Farley (D-9) was chairperson of the campaign, and Sen. Bob Worsley (R-25) was the campaign's treasurer.^[11] 

Citizens for Fair Tax Policy, a political action committee, led the campaign in support of Proposition 126.
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Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona_Proposition 126 _(2018)
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A "yes" vote supported this constitutional amendment to prohibit the state and local governments from enacting new taxes or increasing tax rates on services performed in the state Election results Arizona Proposition 126 Result Votes Percentage Yes 1,436,106 64.09% No 804,794 35.91% Precincts reporting: 100% ______________________________________________________________________________ In reference to the city's assertion that Prop 126 "creates multiple issues and ambiguities" the authoritative site Ballotpedia had this to say: 1. The Attorney General of the State of Arizona wrote the ballot language. 2. Readability scores are designed to indicate the reading difficulty of text. 3. The Grade Level for the ballot summary is grade level 13 4. In 2018, for the 167 statewide measures on the ballot, the average ballot title or question was written at a level appropriate for those with between 19 and 20 years of U.S. formal education (graduate school-level of education), according to the FKGL formula Readability score See also: Ballot measure readability scores, 2018 Using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) and Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) formulas, Ballotpedia scored the readability of the ballot title and summary for this measure. Readability scores are designed to indicate the reading difficulty of text. The Flesch-Kincaid formulas account for the number of words, syllables, and sentences in a text; they do not account for the difficulty of the ideas in the text. The attorney general wrote the ballot language for this measure. The FKGL for the ballot title is grade level 20, and the FRE is 13. The word count for the ballot title is 36, and the estimated reading time is 9 seconds. The FKGL for the ballot summary is grade level 13, and the FRE is 45. The word count for the ballot summary is 48, and the estimated reading time is 12 seconds. In 2018, for the 167 statewide measures on the ballot, the average ballot title or question was written at a level appropriate for those with between 19 and 20 years of U.S. formal education (graduate school-level of education), according to the FKGL formula. Read Ballotpedia's entire 2018 ballot language readability report here