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Prior Lake City Council |
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Prepared and paid for by: 16102 Lakeside Avenue |
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Spending and Taxes |
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Taxes = Spending = Taxes Every dollar spent by any governmental entity comes from a tax or fee imposed on ourselves somewhere. If we want to lower taxes, we need to spend less money.
Living Within Our Means We all wish for nice things that work good and last a long time. In City government, those are roads, police and fire protection, sewer and water systems, parks, and public transit. But we often cannot afford the “ultimate” version of everything we want. We have to work with what we can afford. That means prioritizing necessities over mere conveniences or luxuries. As an example, roads are certainly a necessity, but spending tens of $millions improving a single intersection to save a couple minutes drive time is a convenience.
The Right Priorities In addition to prioritizing amongst various City governmental needs, we all need to prioritize our financial resources against other priorities like education, health care, and in some cases, just being able to afford a place to live. It is not appropriate for us to spend on deluxe or luxury levels of governmental services if we tax people out of being able to afford basics like housing, education, or health care.
Long Term Sustainable Planning We can fool ourselves by borrowing from the future and pretending we can afford something on a sustained basis when we cannot. But like a person living on their credit card, eventually the credit runs out and financial disaster ensues. As a resident who plans to stay here for a few decades, I am much more interested in plans for affordable levels of service that can be sustained on a permanent basis.
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