Last week’s responses to The Fountain Hills Times’ question revealed many Council candidates want voters to believe that our community’s problems can be solved by filling empty retail stores, attracting visitors or reorganizing the fire department. Really?

To generate another $5M per year in revenues, retail and restaurant sales will have to increase over $170M per year. That’s nearly a 50% increase over 2020-21 sales results, at a time when many businesses cannot even find employees.

Are you and others in your household ready to spend another $7,000 per year, per person eating out and buying things in town so we can fix our streets? If not, then is attracting new merchants and restaurants really the solution or is it just more campaign rhetoric?

Since voters rejected a primary property tax 14 years ago there have been six Council elections, each time with candidates wanting voters to believe they will find solutions to the town’s problems. That worn-out rhetoric includes such things as uncovering inefficiencies in bureaucracy, more scrutinization of revenues and expenses and making Town finances more transparent. Now, in 2022, more Council candidates promise the same thing.

In 2018, after four Councils failed to find solutions to revenue/spending problems inside Town Hall, voters were given another chance to approve a property tax that included $4M per year for streets. But again, the solution was rejected. Why? Might the answer be that Council candidates at that time misled voters to believe they would find other solutions?

And here we go again!

When will candidates do their homework before making misleading, preposterous, ludicrous campaign statements? It’s clear some candidates really do not know Fountain Hills. When will common sense based on facts, rather than nonsense, return to normalcy?