Lyn's note: Please feel free to send us any pictures you'd like included. If your photos are for sale, let us know and we will put them under that category. We have a special section for that purpose. If anyone would like to buy a print of any of Herbert's photos, all profits will be donated to one of the local non-profit organizations. Here are the links to this week's Pictures of the Week. Enjoy!
http://carefreeazbusinesses.com/pictures-of-the-week-82817.html
http://carefreeazbusinesses.com/pictures-of-the-week-82817.html
Photo by Mac Wetmore
Photo by Linda Stewart
Here are your bonus rounds from Herbert
http://aneyeonyouproduction.com/82317-storm--sunset.html
Here are your bonus rounds from Herbert
http://aneyeonyouproduction.com/82317-storm--sunset.html
(This photo contains 32 separate fused photos, taken over a 30 minute period during the electrical storm last week. The higher lights in a fairly steady line above the mountains are commercial planes going to and from Sky Harbor during those 30 minutes. The more sparse ones at sporadic heights below that line are corporate or private planes going to and from the smaller airports to the west, like Glendale and Deer Valley.)
http://aneyeonyouproduction.com/82617-am.html
(Getting creative with the color on a pano sunset!)
Photos by Herbert Hitchon
Town of Carefree Marketing newsletter
http://www.carefree.org/336/IN-THE-NEWS
City Sun Times link:
http://news.citysuntimes.com/
Arthur,
Thank you for your letter of 8/21. I, and many from the Town Council and Staff, were at the League of Cities and Towns annual meeting this past week, which is the primary reason for the delayed response.
You raised a number of excellent points in your letter:
Your first point raises the question you have posed before: Isn’t there some way to tax Carefree residents and businesses to cover at least some of the shortfall between the funds generated by the difference between the 1% increase in sales tax revenues which was intended to cover the cost of fire coverage in Carefree and the shortfall between these revenues and the current cost of actually operating the Town’s fire service. We have tried to come up with a solution meeting your criteria many times, but the existing legislation prohibiting such an approach continues to be a roadblock.
Your second point is that the Town should consider research to actually learn resident’s desires rather than our assuming to know these desires. Given my business background in marketing, I would be among the first to support research when we aren’t pretty sure of the answers. You mention a number of areas where you thought such factually based insight might prove helpful. Take your suggestion of research regarding a property tax. To date, I have received four positive responses from Carefree residents favoring a town specific property tax over slightly increased commercial development, and forty to fifty responses opposing a property tax and supporting slightly increased commercial development. So we think we know the answer to that question.
But, as I am sure you are aware, it is a more complicated issue than just fielding research to determine a preference for or against town specific property taxes. Other issues impact the appropriate decision regarding a property tax. For example, there are a few, a very few, properties in Carefree that just aren’t suitable for low density/high value homes, such as the intersections of the major arterial highways servicing vehicles passing through town to adjacent municipalities. These few properties at these intersections just aren’t suitable to the low density residential development as they were zoned by the County decades ago. Permitting limited commercial development of these few selected properties could, at a minimum, postpone, or at best, eliminate, the need for a property tax. It is primarily the combination of these two factors, the assumed desire from the comments we have received for no town specific property taxes and the unsuitability of certain properties for residential development, led us to recommend the strategy of limited commercial development to generate increased sales tax revenues. This strategy, when fully implemented, would still leave 97+% of Carefree’s total acreage in low density residential, thereby leaving the vast majority of the acreage in Carefree untouched.
So, thanks for your letter, but as I am sure you know from your extensive business career, many issues are interrelated and rarely can research determine the answer to more than one facet of a multi-faceted business situation. But you were right to remind us to not overlook research and rely too heavily upon our judgment. We will certainly keep that in mind.
Best regards, and thanks again,
Mayor Les Peterson
I agree that the Town should increase the zoning density for remaining parcels of land. If & When the time comes that a Property tax is needed then there will be more property owners to share in the paying of the tax.
Joe DeVito
You are fortunate not to have property taxes. We had a minimum one in Mesa when we moved here in ’95. We then got hit with a secondary tax which was to have been sundowned but never was. Once at the trough cities never back away from what is perceived as free money.
Laurie Palace
Photos by Herbert Hitchon
Town of Carefree Marketing newsletter
http://www.carefree.org/336/IN-THE-NEWS
City Sun Times link:
http://news.citysuntimes.com/
Arthur,
Thank you for your letter of 8/21. I, and many from the Town Council and Staff, were at the League of Cities and Towns annual meeting this past week, which is the primary reason for the delayed response.
You raised a number of excellent points in your letter:
Your first point raises the question you have posed before: Isn’t there some way to tax Carefree residents and businesses to cover at least some of the shortfall between the funds generated by the difference between the 1% increase in sales tax revenues which was intended to cover the cost of fire coverage in Carefree and the shortfall between these revenues and the current cost of actually operating the Town’s fire service. We have tried to come up with a solution meeting your criteria many times, but the existing legislation prohibiting such an approach continues to be a roadblock.
Your second point is that the Town should consider research to actually learn resident’s desires rather than our assuming to know these desires. Given my business background in marketing, I would be among the first to support research when we aren’t pretty sure of the answers. You mention a number of areas where you thought such factually based insight might prove helpful. Take your suggestion of research regarding a property tax. To date, I have received four positive responses from Carefree residents favoring a town specific property tax over slightly increased commercial development, and forty to fifty responses opposing a property tax and supporting slightly increased commercial development. So we think we know the answer to that question.
But, as I am sure you are aware, it is a more complicated issue than just fielding research to determine a preference for or against town specific property taxes. Other issues impact the appropriate decision regarding a property tax. For example, there are a few, a very few, properties in Carefree that just aren’t suitable for low density/high value homes, such as the intersections of the major arterial highways servicing vehicles passing through town to adjacent municipalities. These few properties at these intersections just aren’t suitable to the low density residential development as they were zoned by the County decades ago. Permitting limited commercial development of these few selected properties could, at a minimum, postpone, or at best, eliminate, the need for a property tax. It is primarily the combination of these two factors, the assumed desire from the comments we have received for no town specific property taxes and the unsuitability of certain properties for residential development, led us to recommend the strategy of limited commercial development to generate increased sales tax revenues. This strategy, when fully implemented, would still leave 97+% of Carefree’s total acreage in low density residential, thereby leaving the vast majority of the acreage in Carefree untouched.
So, thanks for your letter, but as I am sure you know from your extensive business career, many issues are interrelated and rarely can research determine the answer to more than one facet of a multi-faceted business situation. But you were right to remind us to not overlook research and rely too heavily upon our judgment. We will certainly keep that in mind.
Best regards, and thanks again,
Mayor Les Peterson
I agree that the Town should increase the zoning density for remaining parcels of land. If & When the time comes that a Property tax is needed then there will be more property owners to share in the paying of the tax.
Joe DeVito
You are fortunate not to have property taxes. We had a minimum one in Mesa when we moved here in ’95. We then got hit with a secondary tax which was to have been sundowned but never was. Once at the trough cities never back away from what is perceived as free money.
Laurie Palace