Flagstaff committee weighs $40 million bond, 0.25% sales-tax and water fee increase to shore up public safety funding

City staff presented a series of scenarios on Tuesday to a Flagstaff committee aimed at funding public-safety needs, including a $40 million general-obligation bond, possible sales-tax increases, and a proposed increase to the city’s water resources infrastructure protection (WRIP) fee.

Staff member (speaker 2) told the committee the staff analysis separates capital into buildings, furnishings/equipment and non-building items and showed a set of four "tier" spreadsheets. Removing wildland-fire items from Tier 1 reduced the 10-year total from roughly $144.6 million to about $135.6 million. For the WRIP fee specifically, staff reported an average residential increase of about $3.06 per month (about $36.77 per year) based on a modeled rise from $0.53 to $0.88 per 1,000 gallons and a 3,500-gallon-per-month household usage assumption.

Rick (speaker 6), who helped prepare the bond-payback tables, walked the committee through a $40 million GO-bond example and the secondary-property-tax levy mechanics. Using a 0.8 secondary levy policy and an assumed 4% annual average increase in assessed valuations, the model showed a first-year cost to an example $395,000 residential property of about $67 and an average annual levy of roughly $90 over 20 years to pay that portion of the debt. Rick described how a small slice of the existing levy (about 0.2028 of the 0.8 rate in the model) would be dedicated to repay the bond under the assumed growth trajectory.

Several committee members questioned the methodology behind the household and sales-tax impact calculations and offered alternative calculations. One member (speaker 8) noted a different per-resident computation that produced a materially higher per-household annual burden, and staff acknowledged methodological differences and indicated they would refine the calculations for public-facing communications.

On sales tax, staff presented two testing points: a 0.25% local sales-tax increase (which staff estimated would raise the local rate from 2.486% to 2.7336% and would cost an example household of three about $41 per year) and a 0.5% increase (about double that impact). Committee members stressed the regressivity risk of a sales tax and asked that the survey and public materials note exclusions (staff said proposed models would exclude food and residential rental). Several members favored testing only the 0.25% and 0.5% steps, arguing 0.3% is too close to 0.25% to be a useful separate option.

Members also discussed a two-step lodging-tax (BBB) approach: raise the lodging tax so tourism receipts are maintained, then reallocate existing BBB funds to public safety via council action. Staff reiterated that lodging-tax revenue increases must go to tourism functions under state law and that reallocation would require council reappropriation.

The committee repeatedly emphasized the polling instrument must test values (for example, how residents prioritize wildland fire response versus other public-safety services) and avoid wording that could derail the measure with unrelated concerns, citing past local ballot fights that diverted attention to rezoning and other issues. Members asked the polling firm to present 10–15 neutral questions that test both value priorities and willingness to support specific packaged asks (e.g., 0.25% sales tax + $40M bond + WRIP increase).

No formal vote was taken. The committee reached a consensus to wait for the polling results from High Ground (estimated two weeks) before finalizing the package and drafting recommendations to City Council. Staff said the polling results and refined fiscal examples would be shared with the committee and that staff would prepare shorter public-facing materials pointing to the full ConnectFlagstaff detail pages.

Next steps: staff will work with the polling firm to finalize neutral questions, refine household and visitor-share calculations for the sales-tax scenarios, and provide more granular examples showing which Tier 1/Tier 2 capital and operating items would be covered by each packaged ask. The committee scheduled follow-up after the polling deliverable is returned.