FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 7, 2011
CONTACT: Daniel Scarpinato
More tax-and-spend proposals from the status quo candidate
PHOENIX – Career-politician Greg Stanton wants to institute a penalty on Phoenix private property owners who cannot afford to develop their land in a down economy – land they are already paying taxes on.
“Having those empty lots really hurts the quality of life. Those property owners should pay a penalty for that … It shouldn’t be free,” Stanton said at Wednesday’s night debate.
Actually, it’s not free. Property owners are already paying a 16 percent assessment ratio on vacant land. And that’s not including various other property taxes that are levied by other jurisdictions the land resides in.
Additionally, Phoenix is struggling through one of the deepest economic recessions in the country. We’ve lost more than 250,000 jobs and the housing and commercial real estate markets have collapsed, making it difficult – if not impossible – for property owners and private developers to move forward with plans they had prior to the downturn.
Office vacancy in Phoenix has reached a high of nearly 30 percent.
Stanton’s fine would make matters worse.
“Maybe Greg missed a few things after he quit his job on the City Council, but in 2008, the real estate market collapsed and has yet to recover,” said Gullett spokesman Daniel Scarpinato. “This is just one more example of how Greg Stanton wants to grow government and increase its control over business, even at the expense of private property rights. There’s a clear distinction between Greg’s growing government approach and Wes Gullett’s plan to cut taxes and reform City Hall.”
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Yeah, that’s great.
Does Wes have any internal polling he’d like to release.
I mean, we’ve got now one Stanton poll, and one independent poll, that shows Stanton whaling on Wes.
Surely Wes has something than impotent negative attacks to counter this.
Why is Wes Gullett so out of touch with Phoenicians.
Funny how SA never refers to Russell Pearce as “career politician”.
Really, MCTY, is that something important?
There is an election coming up and voters need to make a choice. It’s the positions of the two candidates which are important and that has largely been obscured in this forum by howling and nit picking. Let’s get to the real issues of substance.
Lewis and Pearce differ on their views of how problems with illegal immigration and illegal aliens should be addressed. We know the laws which Senator Pearce has crafted and we know his apporach. Mr. Lewis offers a different approach incorporating immigration “reform” I prefer the approach of Sentaor Pearce. I see it as more effective and more based upon Conservative principles than the approach suggested by Mr. Lewis. That’s an important issue for voters to consider. That would be something worth debating and discussing.
If you really want to debate the application of the “career politician” term, we can do that but I really don’t see the value of or importance of that. Do you think that how the term “careen politician” is applied is something which voters are going to consider when casting their ballots?
The citizen property owners of those lots are “customers” who ARE PAYING for city “services” they in fact aren’t yet receiving, and Stanton’s telling them they need to “service” the city. McDonalds as a franchise, a corporation, a viable business model wouldn’t last 24 hours if it had that attitude.
“Career politician” is neutral. Years of experience are very useful to being successful, so it very much depends on what the person brings to the position, years of USEFUL and VARIED life experience or years of four wall bubble-thinking conference room inertia.