FLAGSTAFF — When early ballots start arriving this week, Flagstaff voters will decide whether to pay more at the register to hire dozens of firefighters, police officers and dispatchers.
Two city measures on the Nov. 3 ballot, Propositions 404 and 405, would raise new money for the Flagstaff Fire Department, the Flagstaff Police Department, the city’s Emergency Management department and Airport Rescue Fire Fighting, according to the Arizona Daily Sun and the City of Flagstaff. Each needs a simple majority to pass.
Prop. 404: a half-cent sales tax
Prop. 404 would raise the city’s sales tax by 0.5%, or 50 cents on a $100 purchase, from July 1, 2027, through June 30, 2042. The city projects it would bring in an average of $18.2 million a year.
The city-specific rate would rise from 2.486% to 2.986%, pushing the combined local rate from 9.386% to 9.886%, the Daily Sun reported. That would put Flagstaff near the top of Arizona’s sales tax rates, though still below a handful of cities, including Williams, where the total exceeds 10%. City staff estimate visitors would pay about 37% of the added tax.
The money would pay for 77 new positions over 10 years: 34 each in police and fire, six in airport rescue and three in emergency management, according to the city’s funding list as reported by the Daily Sun. That would be roughly a 25% increase over the 311 full-time-equivalent staff those departments had as of late May.
Prop. 405: $40 million in bonds
Prop. 405 would let the city issue up to $40 million in general obligation bonds for buildings, vehicles and equipment. The city says the bonds fit within its existing borrowing capacity and would not raise current property tax rates.
The two biggest items are a seventh fire station, estimated at about $16.5 million and planned off John Wesley Powell Boulevard near where more than a thousand new homes are planned, and a roughly $25 million expansion of police headquarters on Sawmill Road. The list also includes a wildland fire management facility, a police evidence warehouse and fleet replacements. Because those items total about $64 million, the city plans to add development impact fees and surplus sales tax revenue, Assistant City Manager Shannon Anderson told the Daily Sun.
The case for and against
The measures grew out of a Public Safety Citizen Committee that met weekly for about seven months before recommending the package in May. The City Council voted unanimously in June to send it to voters.
Union leaders have argued that staff are stretched thin. “Public safety cannot continue to do more with less,” Michael Oliver, president of the Flagstaff Law Enforcement Association, told the council in June, according to the Daily Sun. Supporters filing arguments in the official election pamphlet included the police and fire unions, three current council members and the fiscally conservative group Flagstaff First.
Opposition arguments came from Sean Golliher, a candidate for Coconino County supervisor, who said the city should audit and reallocate existing revenue, and from the progressive Catch Fire Movement, which argued the city should prioritize climate resilience and warned the measures lack safeguards against new police surveillance technology, the paper reported.
Learn more Wednesday
The City of Flagstaff and Flagstaff Unified School District will host an open house from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, at the Flagstaff Aquaplex, 1702 N. Fourth St., to answer questions about Props. 404 and 405 and two FUSD measures, Props. 407 and 409, FlagScanner and the Daily Sun reported. Early voting begins the same day.
Photo: Coconino National Forest via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). A sign marks a prescribed burn during the Flagstaff Prescribed Fire Training Exchange, November 2021.
Sources: Arizona Daily Sun; City of Flagstaff; FlagScanner.
This article was produced with AI assistance and is based on reporting from Arizona Daily Sun, City of Flagstaff and FlagScanner.