It's Back, and It Still Stinks

The “Hotel Tax Initiative” is back, with supporters so hot to trot that they don’t want to wait for the November 2020 election but want it to be placed on a March election ballot. The earlier election, a primary, has far fewer voters, making it a bit more likely that the measure would pass.

The measure funds three “important” needs for our city; three things that we desperately need, cannot do without, but that we certainly do not want to pay for ourselves. This is America, after all, and we never want to pay for benefits.

The first need, and the one cited in the name of the proposition, is expansion of the city’s convention center. On the face of it, this makes a certain amount of sense, in that visitors are paying the cost of having better facilities for their conventions. But what about visitors who are coming here specifically and only for the weather and beaches? Why should they be paying for a convention center that in no way benefits them?

One person countered that by arguing that as a childless person, why should I pay school taxes? I imitated a duck falling from the ceiling. (You don’t remember Groucho Marx?) As part of this city, I am responsible for contributing to the city’s accomplishment of its responsibility to educate its children.

Expansion of the convention center benefits the city, in fact, by attracting larger conventions and increasing revenue from tourism. Since we benefit from that investment, we should be willing to bear the cost of it.

The second need is to provide housing for the homeless. Typical of modern liberalism. We want to do good work, but we want someone else to pay for it. Put your money where your mouth is. If you don't want to pay for it, you are not doing good work. You are advocating for someone else to do good work.

The third need is road repairs, which us utterly ridiculous. Why should someone visiting here from Phoenix pay to repair our roads? Are we going to return the favor by paying to repair the roads in Phoenix? If we want better roads then we need to cough up the money and pay for our own roads.

This damned initiative is like an infestation of rats. It stinks and every time you think you’ve gotten rid of it, it comes back.