Durango city councilors flirted Tuesday with the idea of putting a tax question on the April ballot to pay for streets and sidewalks, but no specific decisions were made when it came to solving the city’s budget woes.
The city is facing a budget crisis. It tried to fix the problem with a ballot question in November, asking voters to raise sales taxes by 0.55 percent and property taxes by 5.4 mills. If approved, measure 2A would have raised up to $7.5 million annually for 25 years to pay for streets, sidewalks, law enforcement and city buildings.
The measure failed by more than 20 percent.
Councilors Chris Bettin, Dean Brookie and Melissa Youssef all expressed concern Tuesday about going to voters again in April with another tax question, no matter how specific or small the request may be. Doing so would further erode the trust the city has with its residents: Why would residents approve a sales tax when they just rejected one in November?
But Mayor Sweetie Marbury and Councilor Dick White, both of whom are term-limited and will step down in April, suggested the city go back to voters in April. The next opportunity to do so would be April 2021, as councilors said they want to stay off the November ballots.
“The November ballots are toxic, so we need to go to an April ballot,” White said. “We cannot let this off for two years.”
After ballot measure 2A’s defeat, city councilors hosted a series of listening sessions with members of the public to discern why the tax question failed by so much. They also hosted a listening session with members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, the Natural Land Preservation Advisory Board and the Multimodal Advisory Board. They also solicited comment from members of the Business Improvement District and the Chamber of Commerce.
All those comments can be packaged into themes: The November tax question asked for too much money and would have been in existence for too long; 2A was too complicated; the measure wasn’t specific enough about how the money would be spent; the November ballot was too crowded with other requests for tax increases; and the city already has enough money, it’s just not using it right.
Some residents have suggested using parks and recreation sales taxes to pay for infrastructure needs, but City Council has largely rejected the possibility of reapportioning those funds. Doing so could erode trust between the council and residents, they say.
“We want to maintain and build public trust,” said City Manager Ron LeBlanc, acknowledging there is a rift in trust between residents and the City Council.
bhauff@durangoherald.com
