Was the option of reducing administrative costs and/or staff even brought up? That would seem to be the obvious first step.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the unrelated large, color, multi-fold insert they put in the envelope for last year's reminder mail.

Welp. I'm never paying it again. They'll have to sue me for it and that'll cost them even more of that sweet money.

a) the tax has funded exactly what it set out to. all schools have received their allotted funding.

b) cutting staff that also handle OTHER revenue division tasks would actually decrease the total funds collected for all revenue sources. revenue division is already short-handed.

c) administrative cuts such as sending non-payers to collections would further reduce the funds collected, which generally due exceed the cost of attempting collection.

d) the large insert was done as a cost cutting method with another department, and actually reduced costs for the city.

e) not paying sends you to collections. no lawsuit, just a derogatory credit report will be your future.

There is an easy solution to this, rewrite the tax to collect the same amount of money but to collect it either from a payroll tax or a property tax. This would eliminate all the wasted money for overhead while still maintaining the tax. That or just cancel the thing altogether, but spending 12% of the money collected administering it is ridiculous.

Solution: Repeal it. You're welcome. Next issue.

We could have made this a property tax or a payroll tax and the collection costs would have been near zero, but we chose to add another layer of bureaucracy in collecting the funds. We did this to ourselves by voting for a totally poorly thought out bill. This whole thing needs to be scrapped and reworked to use our existing tax collection systems.

they can't do anything (and their amending it in the first place was illegal -- it was a tax passed by the voters, so it has to be amended by the voters) -- without sending it to the voters. Who if they had any sense at all would vote against it this time.

Every time you create a new anything (in this case a tax) -- the costs are astronomical. -- also, calling it the arts tax 'for the schools' was wrong -- some of it is supposed to go to non profits. that is mixing up things and misleading the public. I know the elected officials don't care, and to most people -- the ends justify the means -- but it's completely wrong. when people don't realize this is it irksome.