EDITOR:

Mt. Pleasant City Council is asking its residents to support a new sales tax increase on our voting ballots this year, claiming it will bring in new revenue to improve our parks and recreation department and help implement a new North Sanpete arts program here in our community. They claim “we have already missed out on as much as $32,000 — $36,000 per year over the last two years”.

We have heard all these inflated estimates many times before in this community and the tax increases are not unfamiliar to us here. Since 2008 Mt. Pleasant has raised its sales tax four times from 5.95% — 6.65%. This increase will take it to 6.75% and the fifth increase in 11 years.

According to the Utah Tax Payers Association “sales taxes are regressive. They bear a heavier burden on those who are least able to pay. Young families and those on fixed incomes would see a higher percentage of their income taken to pay this tax to fund non-essential city services.” They further noted, “By approving the RAP tax, it would tie the hands of elected officials as they make crucial budget decisions, and place recreation and parks programs as a protected function of government ahead of law enforcement, streets and sanitation.”

Knowing we have some of the worst roads in the county I believe a sales tax increase for recreation shows a lack of our city council priorities in these very unstable economic times. It is definitely not a need for this community, especially with the upcoming elections and the unsurety of the future of our jobs and the economy.

We have heard all the excuses before on sales tax increases; We don’t have enough money and if you vote yes for all these tax increases we would get new roads, improve the parks & recreations, swimming pools, splash pads, and so on. But the reality is they just take us further into debt and our roads and infrastructure change very little. The outside tourism that they are counting on here just won’t make a big enough difference and we as citizens will be bearing the burden.

Being a former City Council member and having spent many hours studying our City Budget there is no need to raise our taxes again for a want. Show Mt. Pleasant City Council that we need our roads fixed before we give them more money wants. Vote no on the RAP tax increase.

Jeff McDonald

Mt. Pleasant

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