Members of Graham’s city council either have a severe case of amnesia – or they’re hoping the city’s voters do.
Because three of the council members who less than six months ago, when they were running for office, said that the city’s tax rate of 30.99 cents per $100 valuation was “about right,” have now decided it’s not. And needs to be raised significantly.
During last fall’s election, city council candidate Jim Young, mayoral candidate Chelsea Dickey, and incumbent councilman Bobby Chin all said, in answer to the newspaper’s elections questionnaire, that the city’s tax rate was “about right.” Indeed, all of the council and mayoral candidates claimed, just last fall, that the rate was “about right.”
But now those same three (and two other incumbents, Ricky Hall and Bonnie Whitaker, not on last year’s ballot) are on track to raise it another 3 cents, or 9.7 percent above current levels, for the next fiscal year.
This is on top of the 2-cent tax increase voted by council members Chin, Whitaker, and Hall last year.
Now, it is important to note: there has not been some dire change in the city’s finances or some sort of “emergency” over the past few months that has prompted a sudden change in the situation necessitating a tax hike.
All of the projects that the council is contemplating spending money on via a tax hike have been on the drawing boards – most notably, and expensively, a new fire substation which has been considered for many years.
And, just by the way, the cost for building the new station is just the tip of the iceberg of increased expenses on the horizon for Graham taxpayers. The hidden cost of that fire station is the huge increase in additional personnel it will engender. To say nothing of at least one new fire truck ($1 million) that’s also part of the proposed tax hike.
We guess, like most voters, we still live by the assumption – perhaps increasingly naive – that politicians who state their positions and make pledges will actually fulfill them once elected to office, or at least try to. Not jettison them so quickly and totally after securing residents’ votes.
Apparently that is a misplaced trust, at least with respect to Graham’s council members and mayor.
