Archive for June 21st, 2009

Looks like the city of Tucson’s 2% increase in utility taxes is causing hardships in other government entities.  It has reported that the cost to Pima County is $600k plus. The article below shows the TUSD hit is $650k plus (directly from the same budget that teachers get paid from). 

We haven’t found direct data on the cost to the UofA, Pima College, Federal Government and the State of Arizona facilities but you can imagine it’s not chump change.

Where does Pima County, TUSD the UofA and the State of Arizona get their revenues to pay for the increased utility taxes imposed by the City of Tucson?

From RobO’Dell at the Arizona Daily Star

The Tucson Unified School District will have to pay an extra $655,000 a year in higher water bills, garbage bills and with the 2 percent utility tax on electric bills and gas bills. Those increases do not include the 2 percent extra it will pay on all its landline phones and cell phones, which hasn’t yet been calculated.

The added utility costs come at a time when school districts are struggling to balance their own budgets after the Legislature cut $133 million from K-12 school funding earlier this year, and the state budget for the next fiscal year, which has not been approved by the governor, would take another $220 million from public education statewide.

Bonnie Betz, chief financial officer for Tucson Unified School District, said the extra costs to the district will affect district operations.

“We’ve planned for the increases,” she said. “But every time we have an increase in utility cost we have to take it out of the organization somewhere.”

Still, Betz sympathized with the position the city finds itself in. “It’s a bad time. We’re all having trouble,” she said.