Just how tone-deaf city employees are has been revealed in Lubbock. The city manager is trying to get across-the-board pay raises. With unemployment higher than any time since the depression, everyone struggling, and the economy in the dumps, the sheer hubris of such an effort is beyond belief.
The Lubbock Avalanche Journal has decided to avoid using the phrase “tax increase” in describing ways in which the city could still manage an unwarranted pay raise for bureaucrats. The paper says the city council could “lift property taxes.”
The only thing that should be “lifted” is the budget, so it can be dropped on city council members’ heads after they vote for it.
The budget IS a tax increase. The total city tax rate stays the same, but increased appraisals means we’ll all be paying higher taxes.
The city should instead adopt the “effective” rate, raising only what they generated last year.
Fat chance: city bureaucrats want to spend nearly $1 million more than they did last year.
What part of “make do with what you got” don’t bureaucrats understand? Every family in Lubbock is having to make do, to cut back, to make tough choices. The only touch choice envisioned by the city is how much more to squeeze out of us.
