Property tax contributes 8 percent to the revenues of Mayor Marchione’s proposed 2013-2014 budget. The mayor is asking City Council to approve an additional 1 percent property tax increase over the next two-year biennium. This tax is inflammatory to the largest growing demographic group of citizens in Redmond — the over-60 bunch. The City Council should not approve this tax increase.

This is the third time Marchione is asking for his 1 percent tax increase, now in a budget year where he has a $9.8 million carry-over surplus. He doesn’t need it, but just because he can get it without a citizen vote of approval, he’s asking Council. Council should remain steadfast this year and not approve this rate increase.

The 2013-2014 preliminary budget says on page 159:

“The high price of housing makes it difficult for many to live in Redmond. A household with an income of $82,000, such as an office manager or bank teller with two children, earns about $50,000 too little to qualify to buy the average Redmond single-family home…45 percent of Redmond households are considered to be cost burdened or severely cost burdened with regard to housing costs.”

Many longer-time residents in their 50s and 60s purchased a home when prices were affordable. Now, many are burdened with demands to support future school levies, library levies and others at time when their incomes are declining owing to their age or the recession. Many of these 60-year-olds don’t have a reasonable personal income that can compete with Finance Director Mike Bailey’s statistics for “Affordable Price of Government.”

Asking neighborhoods to pay for the high cost of elaborate Overlake and downtown stormwater treatment facilities is burdensome, too. The mayor wants a 4 percent wastewater increase this budget. A wet vault the size of three city halls in Overlake may help the large landowners like Group Health to develop their properties, but, please, not on the backs of the single-family home property tax holders. The council should set up a separate utility district to pay for these gargantuan trunklines and vault systems.

Yes, this budget is a two-year step in a 20-year plan in large part to develop two urban centers — but the neighborhood roads and sidewalk developments are being put on the back-burner. The 160th extension to Red-Wood Road, 166th Avenue lane conversion, Northeast 116th Avenue and Northeast 95th Street sidewalks, Union Hill widening, the 172nd Avenue Northeast roundabout are all put on hold until a later, undefined budget cycle.

Neighborhoods on the hills are paying more than their fair share for urban-center projects while those living in the centers — mostly technology workers on Visas — don’t pay property taxes nor are they registered voters. The city tax burden is placed on our traditional neighborhoods rather than those who largely benefit from them.

The 8 percent property tax contribution to the budget is too much. Especially, when Council has a surplus this biennium and proposes unspecified efficiencies and carry-overs to “innovative funds” and “technology.”

Bob Yoder, Redmond