Taxes

Where I Stand:

○ No tax increases.

○ No new taxes

○ Do not renew the Lodging Tax.

○ Town needs to live within its means.

The Challenge:

The Town of Jackson has an insatiable appetite for taxpayer money and is constantly searching for more “revenue streams” to spend on subsidized transit and subsidized housing.

Direct government subsidies of private sector workforce housing are corporate welfare, and at the rate of $100,000 to $400,000 in cash subsidy per unit, we will waste millions barely scratching the surface of our deficit of thousands of workforce units. Publicly funded private sector housing subsidies are an inappropriate use of taxpayer money. This is a windfall for specific individuals and suppresses wage growth for workers in general while providing an indirect but dramatic subsidy for private businesses.

START is a useful component of our transportation plan, but spending $100 million over 20 years (as projected in the ITP) in order to allow START to at best handle 3% of valley travel is not a good deal.

The Solution:

Focus Town spending on its core mission: water, sewer, streets, first responders, courts, and land use planning. Keep Town out of the business of housing subsidies and mass transit initiatives that benefit private business. Encourage employers and commercial enterprises to pay for their own employee costs and transit costs.

START needs to be lean and mean and pay its own way. Teton Village and Jackson commercial and development interests are the main beneficiaries of START, because START transports their customers and employees, and because START is used to “transit wash” over-development that still adds to our traffic woes. It’s time for these commercial and development interests to subsidize transit rather than relying on ever-expanding government subsidies.

It’s reasonable for the Town and County to use public funds to subsidize housing for public sector workers. It’s in the public’s interest to efficiently attract and retain government employees and to keep their wages as low as possible. In conjunction, we need to reduce local government staffing so that we make sure that every government employee is “essential”.

Questions, comments, concerns? Do you have a better idea? Contact Me.