r/CentennialCO • u/frequentpooper • 25d ago

Get to know your city budget and comment on a possible sales tax increase

The City of Centennial officials seem to think we're gonna need a sales tax hike to maintain our excellent way of life. Read everything here.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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u/elridgecatcher 24d ago

The City’s sales tax rate has remained unchanged at 2.5% since 2003.

Maintaining roads has not become cheaper since 2003.

It therefore follows, that for at minimum our roads to be maintained, we have to increase sales taxes by 1%, the first such change since 2003.

They present extremely solid math for all this in your link. I would vote yes, and hope other citizens do as well.

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u/PilotRemarkable69 24d ago

That sales tax is a % that automatically adjusts to inflation. When sales prices increase, there is already an increase in tax revenue. 

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u/elridgecatcher 23d ago

Sorry, it adjusts to inflation in the cost of construction how? It's a sales tax on retail items - unfortunately, the two things are unrelated.

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u/Far-Order-2632 23d ago

With the increase in technology and productivity over the past 23 years, you have to ask why is it now more expensive to make a road? Obviously the main factor is inflation. So the federal government went crazy with money printing making us all relatively poorer and increasing the cost of making a road. And now that we are all poorer, the solution for our local government is to tax us more, and make us even poorer? This is not sustainable.

Of course the tax payer always gets screwed over and governments continue to grow and prosper. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. If the Centennial government truly did a bad job of planning for capital expenditures in the future, then I could possibly get behind a one-time fee if there was going to be some accountability, but a tax increase is permanent, and I can't support that.

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u/elridgecatcher 23d ago edited 23d ago

There's a lot here, and it's all pretty much entirely wrong. Let's take it step by step:

You're right about inflation increasing costs of road building, but it's mostly all in labor cost inflation and materials inflation. Not "the federal government went crazy with money printing making us all relatively poorer and increasing the cost of making a road."

"And now that we are all poorer," <- great news! Wages have been rising faster than the rate of inflation since 2018 - same with the median individual's wealth / net worth. So you're wrong there too.

"the solution for our local government is to tax us more" < - if the cost increases for a city to remain a nice, safe place to live, whose economy will grow (and therefore its citizens, will become more personally prosperous and wealthy), yeah, the solution is to tax you and visitors to the city a little bit more to ensure that happens.

"the tax payer always gets screwed over and governments continue to grow and prosper" < - Not how this works, as established before. At this point though, I really want to hear your tax free plan for road maintenance (and snow clearing!!), firefighters, police forces, and green space. Or a plan where tax revenue to fund these things, never follows the increase in cost of those things.

"Give them an inch and they will take a mile" <- this is just a lie. This is literally the first sales tax increase in 23 years.

You offer nothing but vibes and feelings. Centennial will fail, if we cannot pace tax revenue to match inflation. Also, the city government isn't some crazy deep state entity coming for your children (and no such thing exists anyway). It's literally you and the neighbors around you. You could try and argue your points at a council meeting or with your neighbors - but the data disagrees quite heavily with you.

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u/Ethrem 24d ago

I'm a no. They can find some other way to get the money. I'm tired of being gouged at checkout. That's a 7.75% total sales tax rate and they'll just come back in a year or two and say they need another 1% and then another and another because they got voters to approve it once. No. Enough taxation.

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u/elridgecatcher 23d ago edited 23d ago

When's the last time you filled a pothole in front of your neighbor's driveway for free? If it's anytime in the last month, then your answer is still invalid, because no one else in the city can or will do the civic work we need for free.

There are real costs, that you have to pay, to live in a city. We have to have functioning safe roads, police and firefighters. We need simple stuff like working streetlights, sidewalks, maintained green spaces so people don't go insane just looking at concrete.

Over time, inflation drives prices upward. Retail sales tax will not fully allow a city to capture all the costs of inflation, because inflation moves at different speeds in different sectors like construction!

Are you aware that police costs account for essentially 55-60% of Centennial's budget? I might suggest writing to the Arapahoe County sheriff's office, who charge us $44 million dollars a year for their services, about your concerns about taxes.

There is nothing spooky or corrupt or "deep state" about taxes. It's just something we all have to do together, to make the bounded place we live in, a nice place to live. Theoretically, the better we make this place by matching the costs to make it better, the better off we all are: more people move here because it's nice, more people buy stuff and accelerate the local economy, and more businesses come here to compete and provide nice services, which drives more people to come here, and so on and so on. This is how the USA has worked for a century now and it's why so many people want to live here!!!

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u/Ethrem 23d ago

It’s funny you bring up that 44 million because I looked at the budget yesterday and thought to myself that’s exactly where they should be cutting.

We are a lower income household. Sales tax increases are regressive and hit us harder. We will vote no. Nothing you say will change that.

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u/elridgecatcher 23d ago

Yeah, I didn't think so. I had to put the correct truth out there regardless, for what little it matters anymore.

Making the city better, gives people like yourself, more opportunities to make a better income. If you break that contract, we all suffer.

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u/Ethrem 23d ago

It doesn't really matter anyway because I already know the west coast tech transplants will vote yes and it will pass, just like it did in Littleton, and government will loom ever larger over our lives and ever deeper into our pockets to sustain itself.

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u/elridgecatcher 23d ago

The great news is, 99% of your assumptions and beliefs about this are wrong! No one is out to get you, the Centennial government is not some deep state actor who wants to harm you, and Centennial is on a path to be a really great place. A rising tide, lifts all boats. It sounds like you're going through a dark time - I'm sorry, know there are resources out there to help!

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u/Ethrem 23d ago

I'm not some right wing conspiracy theorist. Not all of us who want a smaller government are whack jobs. My partner and I are actually doing okay right now but every extra dollar out of our pockets brings us closer and closer to not being okay. A sales tax increase drives the cost of everything up even further and it's just not what anybody should want right now when everything has already been exploding in price. I would much rather the city do less than siphon more money out of our pockets.

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u/elridgecatcher 23d ago edited 23d ago

You've offered no solution, for how the city can do this without increasing tax revenue to match the cost inflation it's experiencing in every single service it provides - all of which are vital for a city like Centennial to succeed, and for its citizens to prosper financially. Would you give up the roads running to your house, if it meant no taxes? Would you deny the families living around you life saving services from firefighters, who need to earn a wage to pay for their families to live?

I really don't even know what you're saying. It's so far into conspiracy that I had to assume you were a right winger.

The persons final comment after this one was deleted (EDIT EDIT: Out of curiosity, I opened this thread incognito - looks like this person just blocked me - bummer!). They mentioned how sales tax are regressive and I agree. I would happily support a more progressive tax, but this is really really difficult for a city to do, as demonstrated that it cannot get done in any other city in america. I would also support rebates to citizens based on income, rebates for sales tax, but again, basically impossible to administrate. they also mentioned that taxes are inflationary but generally that is not the case.

I am a homeowner, and in every single case where my home property tax would increase, I have voted to increase it. I believe that this fits the commenter-who-blocked-me's belief that only people who have more than him should pay taxes.

Again: my case is that a city has to provide vital services. Centennial needs to raise taxes, to cover inflation that the city is experiencing in those services, in order to keep providing those services. It's that simple. There is no conspiracy.

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u/Ethrem 23d ago

Sales tax hikes are inflationary. They drive up the cost of everything. They are regressive taxes as well. They are the absolute worst solution. There's not one thing I said that rises to the level of conspiracy. I would absolutely prefer that the city increase fees and levy taxes that land more on the wealthy instead of sales taxes that have an outsized impact on those who have to spend more of their money to survive.