Homeless in Arizona

In most city governments the salaries of the police account for about 40 percent of the budget, while the fire department accounts for about the next 20 percent, with police and fire departments salaries accounting for about 60 percent of the budget.

Gilbert Mayor John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney seem to want you to think they are not going to spend your hard earned tax dollars on cops and firemen, but rather on roads and sewers, which is a lie.

Sadly America is the worlds biggest police state and we jail a higher percentage of our population then any other country in the world.

And the number one reason most of these people in American prisons are their for victimless drug war crimes.

If Gilbert Mayor John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney really wanted to save your tax dollars they would order their police to stop arresting people for victimless crimes and concentrate on real criminals that hurt people, like robbers, burglars, muggers and rapists, not harmless pot smokers.

Source

Sales-tax simplification shouldn’t kill cities, towns

Our Turn by John Lewis and Gail Barney

The Southeast Valley’s explosive growth has municipalities such as Gilbert and Queen Creek scrambling to keep up with such fundamental needs as roads, sewers and public-safety services as developers and home builders erect waves of new homes.

To fund this critical growth-related infrastructure, Arizona cities and towns rely heavily on the construction sales tax, a key component of overall sales-tax revenues. Local sales tax represents approximately 50 percent of general-fund revenues in Gilbert and more than 47 percent in Queen Creek. [And of course almost all of those taxes goes to pay for the cops and firemen, not roads and sewers as Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney want you to think]

With numbers like these, we are alarmed over the continued push in the state Legislature to eliminate the construction sales tax. Special-interest groups are attempting to use Gov. Jan Brewer’s important legislation on tax simplification as the means to achieve this financial windfall no matter the devastation to the state budget or that it will force many development-related costs onto our existing residents and businesses. [Yes, the problem here is SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS, but it's not the unnamed special interest groups mention by Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney. It's the special interest groups called the police union and the fireman union. The police and fire department unions LOVE taxes, because they get about 60 percent of the taxes that most cities collect to pay their salaries]

Gov. Brewer has made tax simplification a top priority and worked tirelessly to develop business-friendly tax reforms to aid economic development and job-creation efforts.

As the mayors of Gilbert and Queen Creek, we are fully supportive. If anyone in the state knows the importance of job creation, it is the leadership of cities and towns. These efforts should not be lost in a legislative battle over special-interest tax breaks.

While the Arizona system of taxation is far from perfect, it does honor the axiom “growth must pay for itself.” The cost of putting in new roads and infrastructure should be shouldered by developments incurring the cost, not by existing homeowners and businesses that already paid their way.

But does tax simplification need to occur? We say yes.

Is eliminating the construction sales tax the best way to achieve this simplification? The answer is clearly no.

We share the objectives behind Gov. Brewer’s tax-simplification legislation but have differing thoughts on how to get there. For this reason, we have been actively engaged in providing feedback, communicating concerns over devastating financial impacts while also spending countless months researching and crafting alternative solutions.

We are almost there.

After months of hard work, with continued guidance from the governor’s office, leaders of cities and towns developed a modified proposal streamlining sales-tax reporting, collection and auditing. We drafted legislative language making Arizona compliant with the federally proposed Marketplace Fairness Act (Internet taxation). [Translation Mayors John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney want to shake us down for even more taxes with an internet tax!!!]

We are working diligently to find a solution on the construction sales tax that is common-sense, benefits Arizona businesses and taxpayers and doesn’t blow an enormous hole in state or local budgets. And we are almost there. [Translation - Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney are working diligently to shake you down for as many taxes as they can!!!]

No one is certain when this legislative session will end. But we do know it can end abruptly, without notice. When it does end, tax simplification should not get lost in the shuffle, nor should legislation get pushed through that harms communities like Gilbert and Queen Creek. [Sorry guys, taxes don't harm the government, taxes feed government bureaucracies. Taxes harm the people that Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney pretend to be looking out for]

Municipalities are the very economic engines of Arizona. Providing infrastructure is vital to economic development and job creation. We ask for continued partnership and transparency to ensure the ultimate outcome on tax simplification is a win for taxpayers, a win for the state and a win for cities and towns. [Translation - Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney want to shake you down for as much of your hard earned money as they can get away with]

John Lewis is the mayor of Gilbert and Gail Barney is the mayor of Queen Creek.