Dear Friends and neighbors, You and your family have been forced to pay, through higher fees and taxes, for Phoenix’s unsustainable costs and inability to face its responsibility to hold them down. I have officially requested a list and amount of all tax and fee hikes the City has imposed on you and will send it to you as soon as the city provides it. Below is a link to a column I wrote for the Arizona Republic that appeared in the June 9, 2010 edition. In it, I lay out four reforms that would solve the city’s budget issues forever by making Phoenix take responsibility for its fiscal management rather than foist it off on citizens and businesses. I was told when I first started this battle that there would be a penalty for doing so. Gravy trains do not take well to imposed brakes, and the king bridles at mention of the naked truth. Since I have been back on the Phoenix City Council, I have been fighting for the city to recognize that its labor cost – at an average $100,000 per worker – is unsustainable and that the bill can’t be paid forever by constantly stacking tax increases after fee hikes on the backs of ratepayers and businesses. We now are told that a recall and smear movement against me are in the wings, financed and organized by the civilian unions that reap the government largesse funded by you taxpayers and businesses. And I’m OK with standing before the public again. It’s not about protecting my job; it’s about structuring a fiscally responsible city that works no matter who’s running it. Also, a recall would shine the spotlight on the necessary discussion of unsustainable labor costs financed by the city’s unrelenting tax- and fee -hike strategy. I’m ready for a very public conversation on that subject. Please forward this to everyone you know who is concerned about runaway government that is spending well beyond its ability to pay. And feel free to tell me what you think. Respectfully, Sal DiCiccio City Councilman, District 6 City of Phoenix 602-262-7491 council.district.6@phoenix.gov ***To view the June 9 Arizona Republic Article please read below or click HERE. 4-point plan for citizens to solve city's fiscal mess While you and your families have been struggling to make your mortgage payments and keep your jobs, Phoenix has been busy adding new taxes and fees. And why is this happening? Because the average cost of city employees is $100,000 per year. To pay for this high cost of labor, Phoenix has shifted the responsibility of solving this problem to your family rather than restructuring its operations. In the past six months, Phoenix has increased your burden by: • Raising your water rates (up 40 percent in the past five years). • Raising your sewer rates ($3 million this year). • Imposing a new food tax ($50 million a year). • Raising fees on small business. I have a four-point solution to the city's financial mess that would put it on the path to fiscal stability, focus resources on functions that affect you directly and make it more responsive and transparent. I once believed this could come about internally, that the administration would see that the train heading for the cliff needed to be redirected immediately. Now I believe it will require a citizen initiative, a charter-changer that must be followed rather than a temporary policy to be side-stepped. Phoenix's problem is not lack of revenue; it's too much spending and a system designed to keep it that way. We could solve that forever using these simple – although not easy to accomplish – changes: • Require managed competition not gamed by the city. With employee costs averaging $100,000, much of that driven by high pension costs, the city must move non-core functions to the private sector. Non-core would be any function that is not a sworn police or firefighter position. The same amount of non-core work would have to be accomplished by the private sector, but we would not pay above-market compensation to workers until they died. • Link employee compensation to market compensation. This concept alone would solve the financial crisis by saving a minimum $300 million per year, essentially paying back all the fees and taxes Phoenix took from taxpayers. It makes no sense that Phoenix pays an average $100,000 compensation in a community where taxpayers make about half of that on average. This would require a mechanism allowing the City Council to exceed that compensation in public votes on singular positions. So if engineers were lacking and much higher paid in the private sector, the council could accommodate those anomalies. • Link employee numbers to population. Linking the number of authorized employees to city population would require the city to balance its growth with its need. It would increase the value of each slot so managers would use people wisely and not shuffle workers to fee-based departments like Water and Aviation (where fees can be raised more quietly to pay for them). • Align elections. If Phoenix aligned its elections with the traditional cycle, September and November of even-number years, it would reduce greatly the influence of special interests. Council races often turn on 1,000 votes or fewer. Having elections at odd times when only the most passionate vote (read that, those with the most at stake), makes it much easier for a well-funded vocal minority to determine who wins. That's not a recipe for significant change. If a new direction is not achieved, next year Phoenix will claim once again that it solved the budget crisis. Unfortunately, it will be laid on the backs and shoulders of an overburdened public. With my changes, Phoenix would accept responsibility for the budget problem and could get off the budget roller coaster that requires repeated tax hikes and service cuts.