As noted here earlier, tonight is city leaders’ next public hearing on the budget (5:30 pm, North Seattle Community College). Today, business groups including the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce added their voices to the budget battle, announcing they’re sending the mayor a letter voicing “strong opposition” to potential business-tax increases to help balance the city budget. Read on for the full text of the letter:
Dear Mayor McGinn:
As representatives of Seattle employers, we write to express our strong opposition to closing this year’s budget deficit by relying on additional revenues that will hurt Seattle employers and the jobs that they create.
We urge you to resist increasing certain business taxes, including a commercial parking tax, and to reinstating Seattle’s tax on jobs—commonly referred to as the Employee Hours Tax—to balance the budget. Increased burdens on employers to balance the budget will delay employment growth and prolong the recession in Seattle and make our city less competitive. We strongly suggest that instead of these and other similar measures, you focus attention on reducing operating expenses as prudent organizations do when their revenues rapidly decline.
Seattle businesses, both large and small, continue to struggle in the worst economy our nation has faced since the Great Depression. While Seattle escaped the early months of this severe economic downturn, today Seattle employers and residents are struggling to make ends meet and find themselves dead center in the middle of this economic crisis. Consider the following:
*The Seattle metro-area’s unemployment rate for March 2010 was 8.5 percent
*Seattle’s office vacancy rate, downtown and throughout the metropolitan area, is well over 20 percent, with some properties experiencing significantly higher vacancy rates
*Seattle currently has fewer private sector jobs than in the year 2000
*The current retail vacancy rate in downtown Seattle is 15.13 percent, over 20 percent in certain neighborhoods such as the Waterfront, Denny Triangle and Belltown, and is a primary concern in neighborhood business districts across Seattle.
Finally, we respect that Seattle has many competing needs and that significant capital projects will require substantial funding. We need an integrated financial and capital plan to help prioritize limited resources before considering the use of new or existing revenues to help finance capital projects. This plan needs to be available to guide decisions this fall.
As you develop the 2011 budget and approaches, we urge you to be mindful of the challenges currently facing Seattle businesses and the citizens looking for work in those businesses, and to reject proposals that would increase taxes and delay further our economic recovery.
The letter as posted on the Seattle Chamber’s site also includes the full list of who signed it – see it here.
| 18 COMMENTS