April 26, 2009

If you only attend one City Council meeting this year, tonight's the night to go. You might want to bring a box lunch; it looks like it will be a long one.

The meeting begins at 5:30 at the Tucson Convention Center. You'll have to sit through an invocation, some liquor-license applications and a call to the audience for comments on — oh, whatever.

But after the call to the audience, the council has scheduled a public hearing on Tucson's proposed $1.3 billion fiscal 2010 budget — and it is not to be missed. Whatever you think of City Manager Mike Letcher's proposals, this is your chance to weigh in, yea or nay.

Here are some high (or low) points on the budget plan, depending on your perspective. They include:

• Increases in taxes and fees totalling nearly $30 million, according to the Star's Rob O'Dell.

A flashpoint: a proposed 2 percent sales tax on all residential rentals that would generate $12 million.

Other increases include:

•An in-lieu property tax on Tucson Water that would be paid by ratepayers and would generate $1.6 million.

• An increase in the public utility tax in city right-of-way to generate $3.4 million. This would be paid by ratepayers of companies such as Tucson Electric Power or Southwest Gas.

• A new 2 percent tax on advertising to generate $964,000.

• A $1 increase in the nightly hotel bed tax to generate $1.8 million

The increases would help avoid $3 million in proposed cuts to outside agencies, $4.3 million in cuts to city employee benefits, and would pay an extra $2 million into the city's pension system and $1.5 mllion into the city's rainy-day fund.

According to O'Dell, the increases would also provide $2 million to the city's affordable-housing trust fund.

It is likely to be a long hearing. Some affordable-housing groups and nonprofits will speak in favor of the increases, O'Dell reported.

But at least two groups are organizing speakers in opposition, including the Tucson-based Smart United Business Strategies and the Phoenix-based Arizona Multihousing Association.

Courtney LeVinus, a consultant for the multihousing association, told O'Dell her group hopes to turn out more than 500 residents to tell the council that they're against the rental tax.

Rick Grinnell, founder of Smart United Business Strategies, told O'Dell he took particular exception to the rental tax, which will be used in part to fund the $2 million contribution to the affordable-housing trust fund.

Grinnell said renters are being punished to fund affordable-housing programs and to support the budgets of nonprofits.

"This mayor and council just seems to think people are just going to put up with this," Grinnell told O'Dell. "They are, if we let them."

LeVinus' group plans to provide sandwich boxes to residents in order to keep them at the meeting so they will voice their opposition to the council.

"We have a feeling it will be a long night," LeVinus said in Monday's Star. "We don't want them to leave and not have their voice heard because they are hungry."

So bring a snack and a water bottle and plan to stick it out. Whatever your views, it's important to let your voice be heard.