TEMPE — Tempe voters will decide Nov. 3 whether to raise the city’s sales tax by half a cent to pay for public safety and other services, ABC15 reported.
Proposition 424 would add 0.5% to Tempe’s 1.8% sales tax, or 50 cents on a $100 purchase, raising about $50 million a year. Groceries bought for home would be exempt. Three-tenths of a cent would go to police, fire and emergency operations, with a tenth each for transit and child care.
The measure is meant partly to replace roughly $24 million a year Tempe lost when state lawmakers abolished city taxes on residential rent. Tom Duensing of the Tempe Forward PAC has called it fair because visitors who shop in Tempe help pay.
Brick Road Coffee owner Gabe Hagen disagrees. “Now their lunch just got more expensive,” he said of his employees, calling the tax regressive. Former city community relations manager Linda Arters questioned mailers warning 911 response times would worsen without the tax, saying she has waited since May for the city’s response-time data.
Sources: ABC15. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Cedward Brice from Scottsdale, USA / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
