I Hope You Like Taxes

By: Mr. Wilson on July 26, 2011
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It appears that Lincolnites who asked for a tax increase will get their wish. The City Council has voted to keep Mayor Beutler's tax increase requests, and on top of that they've voted to keep the fire station in Air Park; library hours won't be cut; and an extra $1 million will go toward parks. I'm going to pick on Councilman Adam Hornung just a little bit here. He's frustrated with the outcome and I can understand why. But he loses me here:
Although I've been on the city council for two years, and I keep seeing these same problems come up and these same solutions. I've gotten pretty used to proposing things that would fix the budget and watching them get voted down.
I'm not sure which "same solutions" Mr. Hornung is referring to. The big solution this year involves raising property taxes, which is certainly not a "same solution". Mr. Hornung says he's proposing something "that would fix the budget". What did you have in mind, Mr. Hornung?
We've got a settlement coming in from Verizon that's going to be upwards of 1.7 million dollars. That's $1.7 million that we could have used to avoid a property tax increase.
Huh? That's not "fixing" the budget! And if you want to talk about "same solutions", that's exactly the sort of one-time, short-term thinking the City Council and Mayor have engaged in for years! Mr. Hornung has a legitimate point that we do need to have some long, honest discussions about the role one-time monies can play in Lincoln's budget. But selling the Verizon settlement as a "fix" and implying that it's not the exact same approach used over the past few years isn't entirely honest. Is it?

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