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Kingman poll: bonds beat new property tax; sales tax more palatable than property tax
Summary
A 300‑respondent telephone survey for Kingman shows limited voter support for a new property tax, stronger—but still under majority—support for a dedicated sales tax, and the highest single preference for general obligation bonds among tested options.
A survey of 300 likely Kingman voters found weak support for a new primary property tax and somewhat stronger support for a dedicated sales tax for public safety, while the single most preferred funding option tested was a general obligation bond.
High Ground Public Affairs senior vice president Paul Bence presented the results to the Kingman City Council on March 18 after the firm conducted live‑operator telephone interviews Feb. 17–19. “It is a 300 sample survey. It is a margin of error of 5.6% plus or minus, with 95% confidence interval,” Bence said.
Why it matters: City staff are developing the fiscal 2025–26 budget and asked for public‑opinion data to gauge whether voters would accept new revenue measures to pay for roads, safety and other projects.
The nut of the results: when asked about a hypothetical property‑tax ballot measure, about 30% of respondents said they would “definitely” or “probably” vote yes and about 63% said they would vote no. By contrast, a tested dedicated sales tax for public safety drew roughly 41% yes and about 53% no.
Bence said transportation items—pothole repair, pavement preservation and general street improvements—ranked at the top of items voters said a property tax could fund. “Those are the things that the voters that would be most important if there were to be a property tax,” he said. Public‑safety items, including response times and staffing, clustered in a second tier of priorities but performed better when the question framed a dedicated sales tax for public safety.
The survey also tested a general question asking respondents to pick their preferred way to raise additional local revenue. “What we found is 36% of respondents, their top choice would be general obligation bonds for specific projects. Second would be a sales tax at 27%. And in third, in a pretty distant third was a primary property tax at about 14%,” Bence said.
Council questions focused on question wording and sample composition. Council Member Walker asked whether the sales‑tax questions were framed around public‑safety uses; Bence said they were. City Manager Marcus Walsh confirmed the poll balanced respondents by voter‑file demographics and that half the interviews asked property‑tax items first and half asked sales‑tax items first to avoid ordering bias.
Cautions from the pollster: turnout for tax elections typically skews older and the sample reflected that: Bence reported roughly 55% of respondents were over age 65. He also said concerns about fixed incomes and the permanent nature of a property tax were strong negatives in this community. “That fixed income concern … is probably the highest I’ve seen it measured in any community that we’ve done survey research in,” he said.
What the council asked staff to do: no formal motion to place a tax question was made at the March 18 meeting. City staff said the survey was informational as the council finishes budget work and that the results could inform future outreach or ballot language.
Ending: The city will keep the survey results in its budget planning files; staff and council indicated they may use the findings to shape outreach and question design if they later pursue a ballot measure.
