I cannot believe the arrogance of the officials in Fountain Hills that are asking voters to approve a property tax at such an unreasonably high amount. They must think that the voters are stupid is as stupid does.

By asking for such an extravagant amount when a smaller amount would sufficiently meet the current and future needs is both arrogant and ignorant. Anyone can create a list of expenses to match their income.

It’s ridiculous to ask for more money than is needed, more money than will be needed in the future (about $100 million over the next 10 years), a monumental tax increase knowing it may never be reduced or eliminated, money that can be applied to all operating expenses and any project without any prior approval from the residents, residents to give up all their leverage on all future expenditure decisions and a massive annual revenue increase with full control to elected officials, forever.

This above list could be built ad nauseam, but the bottom line reason comes down to once the residents approve the proposed tax rate amount there is a total loss of control by the residents of this community. Yes, the mayor and board can be voted in or out of office, but once in office they annually have $7 million to be spent without any control mechanism. And those revenue dollars may keep increasing annually.

This was a bad decision to ask for this monumental tax increase all at one time with little chance of that increase ever being frozen, let alone reversed.

There is only one worse move that I can think of and that is to allow such arrogance and ignorance to prevail. Vote no.