As I stepped off the city commission in June of 2022, City Administration was pushing forward with the idea of increasing our city sales tax to fund a portion of the operational costs around the police and fire department.  This effort will be on the ballot this November for voter approval, and I strongly recommend people vote no.  It’s not a vote against our police and fire departments; it’s a vote against taking the pressure off our elected leaders to run a lean operation and balance that with our needs. 

The city of West Fargo does not have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.  The city might be promoting the zero mil increase in property taxes for 2023 but what they aren’t highlighting is that is an almost 18% increase in property tax revenue.  The mils stayed the same, but property values jumped and therefore your taxes are increasing.  Additionally, there was already talk about raising utility fees. 

Now, let’s get back to the sales tax increase.  This effort was rushed to say the least.  I was involved with a single internal meeting before it was voted on by the commission.  That’s not a lot of effort at listening to input.  This isn’t resulting in a cut to your taxes but will instead loosen the reins on spending.  That’s not a good idea. 

A sales tax could have been great if it had been targeted to pay specifically for our fire station.  Focusing it on the infrastructure would have built in a sunset; when the bonds were paid off the tax would have gone away.  That would have made sense but that wasn’t the desire of city administration.

As our city grows our sales tax could lessen the burden of our infrastructure needs but to start using it for operational costs is a slippery slope and I hope the measure fails in November.