Who likes taxes? Nobody. But we cannot have what we cannot pay for. Every analysis of future town finances leads to the conclusion that only a primary property tax can provide Fountain Hills with revenues required to provide services and maintenance needed now and projected for the foreseeable future.

Fountain Hills is a fiscally conservative community. But there is nothing fiscally conservative about heading into the future without the assurance that town government can continue to provide us with police, fire and ambulance protection, good roads, clean and attractive parks and recreation facilities, and an appropriately staffed Town Hall.

Anyone who thinks that money needed to give us those things will come from more development (fees) or unrealistic growth of our local economy (sales taxes), or generous increases in revenue sharing from the state (pennies from heaven) is delusional. It is pure wishful thinking.

Failure to provide a reliable, locally controllable source of revenue to town government will affect us all – young, old, working or retired. The town will gradually fall into disrepair, local business will suffer, and insufficient government revenues will require dependence upon borrowing and budget gimmicks. Quality of life will diminish. The local real estate market will react. The unhappy result will affect all of us – the value of our properties, for many of us a very major investment, will fall.

It’s pay now or pay (more) later. Let’s not stick our heads into the sand. The problem will not go away. We cannot develop our way out of this. We cannot rely on impossibly massive increases in our local small business economy. We cannot expect state government to bail us out.

Let’s bite the bullet, hold our noses and do the right thing. We need a primary property tax. We need it now.