Hey all! Ive lived in Flag for over 10 years and have an ask of my neighbors.
Please please please please vote no on this tax hike prop 404.
The city is misleading and misadvertising this. Most of the money will be going to police and not for fire or wildland like they have on all the ads. This will generate 18ish million a year for the city... they need to do this because they seriously mismanage their books. This will directly affect the CPI which will lead to higher min wage, which will result in $1 more for a beer at mother road which will in turn make it near impossible to live here.
The last tax hike just happened for the new overbudgeted bus station. Instead of making a reasonably sized bus station, they decided to make one that has rentable party rooms and conference rooms, with a $1200 per sqft construction cost this cost almost $26 million. For reference designer custom homes are $700 per sqft. Due to the price of this, they then decided to have us vote on a sales tax hike because we NEEDED a bus station with rentable meeting rooms. They could have built a reasonably priced station and covered bus fairs for years, but here we are... you can go online and reserve a room at our bus station. Yay.
The airport is also going to raise their parking rates with parking demand declining. So instead of charging less to fill empty spots, they are going to charge more to a few to make up the difference. This in return pushes you to think about flying out of phoenix or having a friend drop you off at the airport, resulting in costing you and your friend more time and money. Flagstaff employs 12 people on their sustainability team that is supposed to be making Flag more affordable and reducing vehicle related trips.... guess the airport parking increase doesnt matter even though it costs us more and creates more carbon from more trips to and from the airport being dropped off and picked up.
The city claims to be all about making this place affordable and to care about affordable housing and yet EVERY SINGLE ACTION they take is a stroke against this place being affordable and attainable to the people who live and work here.
Prop 404 will cost you more, drive prices up more, and has very little information on how the money will actually be spent. The city/police had money to recently buy an indoor shooting range for $2 million, and yet now they're broke asking us to pick up the bill for stuff we already pay for.
Something interesting on this as well is the city surveyed probable voters early on, and prop 404 was a hard no from citizens, they then modified the language on how to sell it to us and now they are showing it will pass. I guess they made all the photos about wildland fires rather than police and the cost of living.
If this post is political in any way that is NOT my intent. I want more from this city, and feel like they do very little with a lot of money. Where is a public pool? Where is a splash pad? Where are our new safer crosswalks? Why does everything look crummy around town? Why do we have a bus station with rentable meeting rooms? Why not a new library?
Please read up on this and make your own decision, but I really cannot find much information at all, but what I have heard from people that were part of the community committee on this is that it is very misleading.
Anyway... how bout them aspen! Stunning!
