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Time to increase the sales tax in Boston?

City Councilor Sam Yoon will seek a home-rule petition to let Boston tack a half-percent onto the current state sales tax, Kevin McCrea reports, adding that new council President Mike Ross's proposed rules changes, which include posting proposed rules changes online, are not online.

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Stop the presses - the city of Boston does not need more revenue! We already have a $2.4 billion budget for 250,000 homes - that's $10,000 in government per household just for municipal government (quadruple that for all government). The average policeman with detail and OT and pension makes well over $100,000 a year, our teachers are the highest paid in the state and a few years ago the Globe reported that we pay more per capita for fire protection than any city in the country. We have to take care of our city employees - but at some point it becomes unsustainable and our answer is "raise taxes" to pay for things we already can't afford. Businesses are cutting salaries and laying off people but the Boston school budget will increase $30 million next year just for collective bargaining and step increases in a zero inflation environment when the number of students is actually decreasing. So this means we may have to lay some people off so others can get raises and then we propose new taxes to pay for this lunacy. When are we going to get some fiscal sanity around here?

Yesterday the Boston Zoning Commission approved variances for two grossly non-compliant buildings (one twice the zoning limit and the other zoned for no building at all) in the Back Bay because "we need the taxes". Since when should budget growth be used as an excuse to circumvent the rule of law. Is anybody minding the store - isn't this the kind of reasoning and leadership that got us in this trouble in the first place?

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Boston is too small a town for city taxes to work. Manhattan gets away with it due to it's size and large number of non-car owners. If Boston increased the sales tax in the city, I'd start doing all my shopping 2 seconds away in Cambridge. We already have to go to Cambridge to rent cars because residents aren't exempt from the convention center fee. (of course, ignoring the fact we could fire half the city workers and still get everything done...)

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Congratulations to Sam Yoon for having the courage to do something about crime. We could wait forever for the federal govt to drop money on us, or for the mumbles mob to take on the police union.

In the meantime, our neighborhoods and even downtown crossing become shooting galleries.

johnmcboston may say a half penny will make him shop in cambridge, but a few gun shots and some menacing looking gangs will drive away a lot more customers than a nickel on 10 dollars of sales.

downtown businesses know they stand to lose more business from the threat of crime than from an insignificant earmarked sales tax.

Sam's nickel for public safety has been tried in cities a lot smaller than new york and worked.

It's easy to repeat the "can't raise taxes...can't raise taxes" mantra like a Reaganaut zombie, but remember their other mantra - government can't do anything, so just give up and surrender to the magic of the marketplace. We see how well that worked out.

Go Sam.

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Anon -

we already spend about $300 million a year to protect 90 square miles - that's over $3 million per square mile annually. This doesn't include 10's of millions on violence prevention and god knows how many other government programs that have obviously not worked over the year.

How in the world is any more money going solve the problem - you may not realize it - but the marketplace worked perfectly - people were allowed to be given improper incentives by our government who is supposed to regulate the marketplace and they behaved improperly. Now you want to give the government that has proven completely inept at everything they do more money to do nothing? More money is the last thing we need.

Profile in lunacy if you ask me!!!

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