Fountain Hills has been honored with the Playful City USA award for the sixth time. These awards result from the hard work of the town staff, volunteers, service clubs and the council’s encouragement and support.

This town offers so many recreation opportunities to our residents and visitors. The numerous events in our parks, along with the Community Center’s continual activities, hiking, tennis, pickleball, our sport parks, the artwork and the fountain lake make Fountain Hills special.

These amenities come at a recurring cost to continue and maintain. The town reportedly is at a point that the expenditures will exceed the income. Balancing the finances will require the difficult, painful cutting of funding for services or raise the income revenue.

These circumstances compel the town to consider a primary property tax to replace revenue lost from other sources. Construction fees are down, the state shared revenue has diminished and there are no replacement revenues on the horizon other than a primary property tax. In addition, our police, fire and emergency services costs are increasing, roads are in need of resurfacing and our facilities require repairs.

Cutting more expenses is not a viable option since we have already slashed the staff to half of what it was. Fountain Hills is now and has always been one of the lowest spending per capita towns in Maricopa County.

Towns without a primary property tax do not survive unless they have other major industrial or retail commerce income sources. Bond financing will cost us more as compared to the proposed primary property tax.

Please give the primary property tax a favorable consideration and avoid any degradation of the amenities and activities we enjoy or the value of our homes. Vote yes on the primary property tax.